Treatment outcomes and plasma level of ritonavir-boosted lopinavir monotherapy among HIV-infected patients who had NRTI and NNRTI failure

A prospective study was conducted among HIV-infected patients who failed NNRTI-based antiretroviral therapy with M184V, TAMs, and NNRTI mutations, and were na？ve to protease inhibitor. LPV/r at 400/100 mg and lamivudine 150 mg were given twice daily. CD4 and HIV-1 RNA were monitored at week 0, 12, 24, and 48. LPV Cmin was assayed for the first 14 patients using HPLC.There were 40 patients with a mean age of 37 years and 70% were male. Median (IQR) baseline CD4 was 123 (37-245) cells/mm3 and median (IQR) HIV-1 RNA was 55,800 (9,670-100,000) copies/mL. By intend-to-treat analysis, 30 (75%) and 24 (60%) patients achieved HIV-1 RNA at <400 and <50 copies/mL, respectively. In as-treated analysis, the corresponding rates were 29 (83%) and 23 (67%), respectively. Low-level viral rebound was found in 6 (15%) patients at week 48. Medians CD4 at week 12, 24, 36 and 48 were 249, 283, 307, and 351 cells/mm3 and significantly changed from baseline (all, P < 0.05). At 6 and 12 weeks, median (min-max) LPV Cmin was 6.52 (1.62-11.64) mg/L and 5.79 (0.75-16.31) mg/L, respectively. There were increments of mean total cholesterol and triglyceride at 48 weeks from baseline (P < 0.05).LPV/r monotherapy with recycled lamivudine can maintain virological suppression in a substantial proportion of patients failing NNRTI-based regimen and provides adequate plasma concentrations of LPV although the incidence of low-level viremia is relatively high.Currently, non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitor (NNRTI)-based highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) is widely prescribed as an initial therapy for treatment na？ve HIV-infected patients, particularly in many resource-constrained countries [1]. However, in patients who have delayed detection of treatment failure in this setting, the virus is often resistant to most existing nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors (NRTIs) and NNRTIs even failing from the first regimen [2]. As a consequence, constructing the potent salvage regimens t