Dr.Ben,thank you so much.I've read somewhere about this theraphy,it's a 1 week with meds and the other drug free and so on....some selected patients were doing well ,meaning VL undetectable and steady cd4 count for 1 whole year , what do you about this theraphy ,Doc? Thks

Thanks for your post.

The entire subject of interrupted treatment is getting a lot of attention, for a wide variety of reasons. The week-on, week-off strategies that you've mentioned are part of this continuum.

Personally, I don't recommend interrupted treatment to my patients (with the exception of planned, long-term discontinuations), because of the risk of developing drug resistance and frankly, because we're still looking at early research data in a very limited number of patients.

Given that for most patients on first- or second-line treatments we can contruct relatively easy to take, well tolerated (and potentially life saving) regimens, I'd see no reason to endorse experimentation at any level, particularly with unrecommended strategies.

This shouldn't be taken to mean that we shouldn't continue to explore ways to improve the quality of life of patients, including possible strategies to limit the risk and cost of lengthy drug treatments. Stay tuned, I'm sure we'll learn more in the future. BY