Optimized Antiretroviral Therapy with Darunavir/Ritonavir, Etravirine and/or Raltegarvir: A Salvage Therapy Option in HIV-1 Infected Patients with Long-Term Therapeutic Failures, about 23 Cases

Objectives: The aims of this study was to analyze the immuno-virologic response after optimised background antiretroviral therapy (OBT) associated to new active antiretroviral treatment (ART) in HIV-1 infected patients with chronic virologic failure. Methods: We conducted a descriptive analysis of the immuno-virologic responses in HIV-1 adult infected patients: 1) harbouring multiple therapeutic failures with ART; 2) with no virologic response obtained over 10 years (1997-2008); and 3) treated with OBT combined with new drugs including at least 1 of the 3 active ART among darunavir/ritonavir, etravirine and raltegravir; 4) observed between month 0 (M0), before new ART to month 12 (M12) after new ART initialisation. Results: Twenty three patients were included in the study. After OBT, the proportion of patients with undetectable viral load was significantly higher at M6 and M12 than M0 (86% and 73% versus 0%, p = 0.03, respectively). At the same period, the median HIV viral load decreased significantly in 19/23 (83%) patients from 4.3 to 1.69log10 HIV-1 RNA copies/ml (p < 0.001, respectively). The median CD4-T cells count increased significantly from 171/mm3 [0 - 604] to 449/mm3 [130 - 964] between M0 and M12 (p < 0.001), while the proportion of patients with CD4-T cells count below 200/mm3 decreased from 57% to 23% (p = 0.02). Tolerability was good and no death was recorded during the 12-month' follow-up. Conclusions: These results show that the combination of OBT with the new ART can offer a salvage therapy in patients presenting a long-term history of virologic failures.