Doctors say that simpler doses should make treatment more effective as well as free patients from a sometimes all-consuming obsession with taking their pills on time. We are giving patients back a freedom of choice in how to live their lives, uninterrupted by taking tablets. A key ingredient of most drug regimens is a class of medicines called protease inhibitors. At this week's 7th Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections in San Francisco, doctors described results of testing with new varieties of protease inhihibors. Some of these medicines are 10 times more powerful than the ones that transformed AIDS treatment.
Protease inhibitors are by far the biggest lump in the pill burden.
In the works are protease inhibitors that doctors hope will need to be taken twice or even just once a day. In preliminary testing directed by Sanne, it appears that one or two of these pills once a day is as effective at suppressing HIV as the standard dose of nelfinavir, an older protease inhibitor. Abbott presented promising results with its experimental protease inhibitor ABT-378, showing it seems to work against strains of virus that are already resistant to other drugs. The drug will be combined with ritonavir, another protease inhibitor, into pills that will be taken three at a time, twice a day. The company is working on smaller doses as well.