Resistance persists after 'drug holidays'
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Resistant HIV often still persists after the interruption of treatment,
the latest research indicates. Treatment interruptions are sometimes used
to give non-resistant virus (which often reproduces faster) a chance to
'crowd out' resistant strains.
Dr Jacques Izopet of Toulouse, France closely monitored 21 French patients
with a resistant virus when they stopped their HIV drug regime for a period
of three months. Of these 21, 13 were shown to have protease inhibitor
resistance mutations at the beginning of the three-month break.
After the treatment break, the majority of the group had reverted back
to a 'wild-type' virus, which appeared not to have resistance mutations.
But eight patients still had some protease-inhibitor resistant HIV, which
formed from 0.3 to 21 per cent of their total viral population. This rapidly
predominated when the drugs were reintroduced, because it was not being
suppressed - even in the four patients who were not restarted on PIs.
However, one third of the 21 patients responded to their new regime. "They
had a sustained response to the new treatment after six months,"
Izopet said.
Free hepatitis B jabs at gay festival
The Purple in the Park gay festival in London on 1 June saw a new addition to the usual dance tents - the 'Sorted' tent, where you could get a vaccination for hepatitis B. Over 70 punters took the plunge and got their first hep B jab.
The 'B Safe tent' was an initiative of the Sorted hepatitis B vaccination programme, which is based at the Victoria and Soho sexual health clinics
