United Kingdom: HIV Patients May Run Out of Drug Options -- Study

An increasing number of HIV patients in Britain risk running out of treatment options as their virus becomes resistant to current HAART drug cocktails, researchers said Friday.

Professor Caroline Sabin, an epidemiologist at London's Royal Free and University College Medical School, and colleagues studied more than 16,000 patients treated between 1996 and 2002. They found that more and more patients are in danger of exhausting all options after switching drug cocktails several times. Their health, therefore, will depend on the development of new treatments.

"If you are looking at the number of all patients treated for HIV in the UK, you find 5 to 6 percent who we believe have experienced treatment exhaustion," said Sabin. "We need to continue to monitor the situation. There needs to be new drugs that are easier to take and less cross-resistant to other drugs."

HAART drug combinations help suppress HIV and keep it from damaging patients' immune systems. However, resistance eventually develops in most patients. With just three main classes of HAART, combinations can become exhausted, noted Sabin. "While the patient had it under control at some stage, the drugs may [eventually] fail and the patient will need a different combination," she said.

The study, "Treatment Exhaustion of Highly Active Antiretroviral Therapy (HAART) Among Individuals Infected with HIV in the United Kingdom: Multicentre Cohort Study," was published online in the British Medical Journal (doi:10.1136/bmj.38369.669850.8F).

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