Synergistic Triple-Drug Regimen for Newborn HIV
VirologyComments
The post ignores the toxicity profile. Combining three potent drugs in a newborn primate is a far cry from the metabolic toll on a human neonate.
Given the synergistic effect, do we know if the efficacy is due to targeting different stages of the viral life cycle, such as combining a reverse transcriptase inhibitor with an integrase inhibitor? I am curious if the synergy is pharmacodynamic or purely additive.
reminds me of how we treat tuberculosis with multi-drug cocktails to prevent resistance.
I'm wondering about the "permanent" part... did they check for latent reservoirs in the lymph nodes or just plasma? If the virus is hiding in the DNA, it might just be a very long sleep...
This is a timely shift given the recent improvements in early infant diagnosis (EID) in low resource settings. Getting these cocktails administered within that three day window is much more feasible now that we have point of care testing.
Exactly. We see this in public health all the time; a single drug rarely stops an outbreak. It is the combination of sanitation, nutrition, and medicine that actually moves the needle in the clinic.
If the efficacy depends entirely on that three day window, would the regimen still be viable in regions where initial screening is delayed? It is possible the synergy is less about the drugs and more about the specific state of the neonatal immune system.