Treatment for six months with twice weekly testosterone skin
patches appears safe and
well-tolerated by women with HIV
with low body weight.
Women with low testosterone levels who had lost on average 18 per cent of their body weight were offered testosterone patches or placebo. Women treated with testosterone gained muscle mass. None
of the 57 women treated
reported liver or blood fat
abnormalities or any negative impact upon their immune system, hair gain or deepening voice.
If you are on a combination that includes NNRTIs and NRTIs and you decide to take a treatment break, stopping all the drugs at the same time could risk
you developing drug resistance.
This is because NNRTIs such as nevirapine and efavirenz last at higher levels in the blood for longer periods, and may still be present in the blood at therapeutic levels many days after stopping them.
New research suggests that stopping nevirapine five days prior to stopping NRTIs may be a sensible strategy which protects against drug resistance.
Researchers in Brazil randomised people with Aids who were on treatment with or without HIV
related wasting to seven days of treatment with either glutamine, high or low dose alanyl-glutamine or placebo. They found gastrointestinal symptoms improved among those people treated with glutamine or high dose alanyl-glutamine.
All patients who had their antiretroviral drug levels measured at the outset had low levels two hours after taking them.
Glutamine use led to a 14 per cent rise in antiretroviral drug levels, and high dose alanyl-glutamine increased antiretroviral drug levels by 113 per cent. The researchers suggested that glutamine and alanyl-glutamine may help in improving antiretroviral therapy levels as well as being suitable treatments for diarrhoea.
Boehringer Ingelheim has announced further changes to the named patient programme for its experimental protease inhibitor, Tipranavir. Tipranavir is now available to anyone over the age of 18 who has used nucleoside analogues, NNRTIs and at least two protease inhibitor combinations. It no longer matters what your CD4 or viral load are, but there are certain restrictions regarding current liver function. If you think you could benefit from treatment with Tipranavir, discuss its use with your doctor.
New research suggests that a lower level of the enzyme lysozyme in the brain contributes to development of dementia. Researchers have found that cells in the brains of people with HIV-associated dementia do not excrete the enzyme, which acts as a defensive protein. People living with HIV had lower levels of the enzyme compared to HIV negative controls, but researchers found levels to be lowest among those people with HIV-related dementia.
A new Spanish study has shown that CD4 gains after starting HAART are less good if therapy is begun after the CD4 count has decreased below 200 cells. Additionally, CD4 gains tend to peak after three years of antiretroviral therapy and increases tend to level off after about four to five years of HAART, even among people with an undetectable viral load.
The study included 861 people who began their first HAART combination with at least three antiretroviral drugs after 1996. Researchers
divided participants into four groups according to their CD4 count when they began HAART. After 173 weeks of follow-up, people who had started therapy with less than 200 CD4 cells were shown to be 21 per cent less likely than those who began therapy with a CD4 count of 500 cells to have a CD4 count above 200 cells
at the last measurement.
