High quality of life, treatment tolerability, safety and efficacy in HIV patients switching from triple therapy to lopinavir/ritonavir monotherapy: A randomized clinical trial

Trial design

The QoLKAMON study evaluated quality of life, efficacy and treatment safety in HIV patients receiving lopinavir/ritonavir in monotherapy (MT) versus continuing combined antiretroviral triple treatment with a boosted protease inhibitor (TT).

Methods

This was a 24-week, open-label, multicentre study in virologically-suppressed HIV-infected participants (N = 225) with a 2:1 randomization: 146 patients who switched to MT were compared with 79 patients who remained on a TT regimen. The primary endpoint was change in patient-reported outcomes in quality of life as measured by the MOS-HIV and EQ-5D questionnaires. Secondary endpoints included treatment adherence, patient satisfaction, incidence of adverse events and differences in plasma HIV-1 RNA viral load (VL) and CD4 cell counts.

Results

Baseline quality of life, measured with the MOS-HIV score, was very good (overall score of 83 ± 10.5 in the MT arm and 82.3 ± 11.3 in the TT arm) and suffered no change during the study in any of the arms (at week 24, 83.5 ± 12.2 in MT arm and 81.9 ± 12.7 in TT arm), without statistically significant differences when compared. In regards to adherence to therapy and patient satisfaction, some aspects (number of doses forgotten in the last week and satisfaction of treatment measured with the CESTA score, dimension 1) improved significantly with MT. There were also no differences in the incidence and severity of adverse events, even though 22.8% of those in the MT arm switched their treatment when they were included in the study. Moreover, there was also no significant difference between the immunological and virological evolution of MT and TT. In the MT arm, the VL was always undetectable in 83% of patients (vs 90.7% in the TT arm) and there were only 6.7% of virological failures with VL > 50 copies/mL (vs 2.3% in the TT arm), without resistance mutations and with resuppression of VL after switching back to TT.

Conclusions

In a new clinical trial, monotherapy as a treatment simplification strategy in HIV-1 infected patients with sustained viral suppression has demonstrated quality of life, safety and efficacy profiles comparable to those of conventional triple therapy regimens.

Once-daily antiretroviral therapy: Spanish Consensus Statement

BACKGROUND

Administration of antiretroviral therapy (ART) once daily is creating extraordinary interest among the members of the scientific community and also among those who receive the therapy. However, in clinical practice, some doubts remain about its use.

OBJECTIVES

This document examines the characteristics and possibilities of treatment administered once daily.

METHODS

Consensus of 248 Spanish experts in the field.

RESULTS

Once-daily dosing is considered an added value which could favour adherence and, therefore, efficacy, as well as the quality of life of certain patients, however, the objective of adequate adherence in the long term is often difficult to achieve regardless of the treatment used. In theory, any patient can receive once-daily therapy, although some patients could particularly benefit from it, e.g. those with unfavourable social or personal circumstances, including drug users, patients whose treatment must be supervised, patients receiving multiple medications, or those who need rescue therapy after multiple treatment failures. At present, it is possible to design once-daily ART using some of the combinations of drugs considered as first-choice in national and international recommendations for antiretroviral therapy, but the options are still limited. The marketing of new drugs with this characteristic could allow us to increase the number and types of patient who can benefit from once-daily regimens, including those patients who need rescue therapy.

CONCLUSIONS

Once-daily ART is a good alternative to regimens administered several times each day when a potent combination of active drugs is available.