Treatment News

Compiled by Gus Cairns

Start at 350, say new European treatment guidelines

New HIV treatment guidelines released by the European AIDS Clinical Society say that HIV treatment should be started for any patient with a CD4 count of under 350, rather than 200 as in the past. They also say that the goal of any therapy should be to get patients virally undetectable, not matter how treatment-experienced or drug-resistant they are.

They say that a resistance test should be done whenever someone is diagnosed, and removed Combivir (AZT/3TC) from the list of recommended first-line nucleoside drugs, singling out Kivexa or Truvada.

The guidelines were issued at the recent European AIDS Conference alongside new guidelines on the management of hepatitis and of lipodystrophy, cholesterol, diabetes and so on, all packed into a 52-page A6 booklet.

Acknowledging that the new set of guidelines were “much less conservative and more aggressive than the previous sets” in 2003 and 2005, restiring EACS President Dr José Gatell said that the arrival of three to four drugs, some within completely new classes, “will change substantially some aspects of antiretroviral therapy.”
The new European Treatment guidelines are at www.eacs.eu/guide/index.htm

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