Importance of the drug Fuzeon (enfuvirtide) in the management of HIV

Oct 20 2005

New potent combinations make suppression of virus to undetectable levels more achievable for treatment-experienced HIV patients.

The importance of the drug FUZEON (enfuvirtide) in the management of HIV has been officially recognised by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS).

Their newly updated HIV/AIDS treatment guidelines support the use of FUZEON with an active boosted protease inhibitor (PI) for the management of treatment-experienced patients.

“These guidelines clearly set more ambitious goals for the management of treatment-experienced patients now that we have potent therapies such as the combination of tipranavir and enfuvirtide,” commented Dr Anton Pozniak, Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, London. “These guidelines provide real clarity and much needed direction on how to best care for pre-treated patients.”

The DHHS recommendation reflects the growing body of evidence for the powerful “FUZEON effect” which has been seen across the RESIST 1 & 2, POWER 1 & 2 and TORO 1 & 2 studies. These studies showed that adding FUZEON almost doubled the number of patients reaching undetectable, when combined with one of the latest boosted protease inhibitors (PI) such as lopinavir, tipranavir or TMC 114.

The guidelines recommend the treatment goal of achieving the suppression of the virus to levels that make it undetectable in the blood, for treatment-experienced patients who show some drug resistance but still have some active antiretroviral agents available. An active drug is one that is still effective against the virus.