Drug therapy in HIV infection--Fifth International Congress

At present, the optimal clinical management of HIV infection involves therapy with combinations of nucleoside and non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors (NRTIs and NNRTIs, respectively) and protease inhibitors (PIs). Although these regimens are effective at reducing mortality and progression to AIDS, they fail to sustain a successful control of HIV RNA levels in a large proportion of patients; at the same time, resistance remains a major clinical problem. Development of novel antiretroviral drugs, with limited or no cross-resistance to existing drugs, that are more potent or that act by different mechanisms, is an obvious strategy to overcome such limitations. This report focuses on clinical trials of such selected drugs that were presented at this congress.