Structured Treatment Interruptions Evaluated In HIV Patients.(Brief Article)

2002 JAN 16 - (NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net) -- by Michelle Marble, senior medical writer - Structured treatment interruptions (STIs) of antiretroviral therapy in HIV infected patients were the source of several discussions at the 41st Annual Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy (ICAAC), held December 15-19, 2001, in Chicago, Illinois.

Philppe Hermans, CHU, Saint-Pierre Hospital, Brussels, Belgium, gave a talk entitled "Use of Structured Treatment Interruptions in Primary Infections," at the "Controversies in HIV Therapeutics" symposium, December 16, 2001.

"STI is not a current practice and must be done only in clinical trials," stated Hermans. "The optional options have not been adequately defined yet."

He explained that STI should only be considered in HIV patients during the primary infection period. There are two categories of primary HIV infection (PHI), those are patients with acute PHI, and patients with early HIV infection.

The rationale for the use of STI in PHI is to help preserve and improve immune function and help reduce the spread of HIV in the patient's tissues. It is suggested that the initial treatment of a patient should incorporate combination therapies. Early, highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) may delay disease progression and preserve or expand cellular immune effector T cells against HIV as well as anti-HIV humoral immune responses.

In the short-term, there are many clinical benefits to HAART, however, in the long-term, there ...