Question
Is there much difference between lamivudine and emitricitabine?
25 October 2020. Related: All topics.
Because of lockdown I was stuck out of South Africa for 6 months so was given Avonza which uses lamivudine as opposed to Atenef which has emitricitabine, which is what I used to take. I’m now back in South Africa and back on Atenef, is this OK? Is there much difference?
Answer
Thanks for getting in touch.
lamivudine and emitricitabine are very similar ARVs as the following notes- https://i-base.info/guides/1561 Therefore, it will be fine to go back to the Atenef which are you’ll see from the link is a generic version of Artripla.
If you’ve been outside of South Africa for 6 months, if you can it might be worth having a viral load test.
Hi Tich,
Being away from your ‘normal’ routine can have an impact, it’s great to hear that you’re slowly getting back to normal.
Thank you very much for your answer. I have taken a viral load and cd4 count test and am awaiting results. Being away for so long,diet and lifestylehad also changed so am slowly getting back to usual routine.