NEW GUIDELINES RECOMMEND FUZEON FOR RESISTANT HIV

The International AIDS Society-USA has released revised HIV treatment guidelines at the International AIDS Conference in Toronto. The guidelines recommend for the first time that the goal of therapy in heavily treatment-experienced patients should be to achieve undetectable levels of HIV (less than 50 copies/mL) and contain the results from several studies with newer HIV treatments, such as darunavir and tipranavir, in which concomitant use of Roche and Trimeris' Fuzeon was associated with a significantly greater likelihood of achieving these levels of HIV.

In order to combat high rates of resistance and improve the chances of reaching undetectable levels -- which has been shown to improve clinical outcomes -- the new guidelines recognize that patients need the full potency of at least two fully active drugs, such as Fuzeon and a newer boosted protease inhibitor. Before the availability of several of these kinds of drugs, achieving undetectable levels in a significant number of heavily treatment-experienced patients was not possible.

Administered as one 90-mg injection twice daily, Fuzeon is the first and only fusion inhibitor for the treatment of HIV. The drug works outside the CD4 cell, blocking HIV from entering. For this reason, Fuzeon is effective in treatment-experienced patients who have developed resistance to other HIV drugs, though patients may still develop resistance to Fuzeon.