Doctor after many years on crixivan+combivir with great success I got very tired and switched to viramune+combivir.I was undetectable at the time of the switch. Considering that I once before used crixivan+norvir+combivir and my lipids went up so I stopped it. My question to you is if this new combo viramune+combvir fails whatwould be the best combo for me. How would you act if I was your patient? thank you

thanks for your question. Provided that you switched drugs for reasons of side effects (such as elevated lipids, for example) AND your viral load was undetectable at the time of the switch; you can quite safely assume that you don't have drug resistance to the first treatment regimen.

The answer to your question about second round treatments is a very important one; typically the reasons for failure of a ZDV/3TC/Nevirapine regimen is either because of resistance to 3TC or nevirapine. It is important not to allow high level viral replication to continue in the face of treatment; this only breeds cross-resistance and higher levels of drug resistance. It is also important to recognize that if resistance to nevirapine is present, that the virus is very likely resistant to all other non-nukes, such as efavirenz and delaviradine. It would be important to capture the genotypic or phenotypic status of the virus at time of failure too. Typically after failure of a non-nuke regimen, we use a boosted protease regimen such as ritonavir/indinavir or ritonavir/lopinavir in combination with two NRTIs.