Mending a broken HAART: a report from the 2nd International Workshop on Salvage Therapy.

Data from a study at the Johns Hopkins HIV clinic shows that 63 percent of patients taking their first combination regimen containing a protease inhibitor (PI) fail to suppress their HIV levels below 500 c/ml at the one year mark in treatment. The subject of the 2nd International Workshop on Salvage Therapy was how to best treat these patients afterwards. One researcher described salvage therapy as "mayhem." He noted that among 114 patients studied at the University of Alabama, there were 242 unique antiretroviral regimens prescribed, and each patient had an average of 9.4 regimen events or drug holidays. Only three patients shared an identical sequence of events. Other topics under discussion at the workshop included the role of drug holidays, monthly cyclic therapy, Mega-HAART, and the optimal sequencing of NRTIs and PIs.