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Rick, I was just trying to get comparable data for other PIs. As I understand recent data presented in Toronto, there have been two studies using Viracept as the first PI on patients who had failed other non-PI therapies. One study involve 8 patients who had failed prior therapies and were treated with Viracept. I don't have abstracts, but reports indicated that a month after these patients were switched (viral loaded averaged just under 100,000 copies / mL when switched) the average for the group was over 300,000 copies and 6 of the 8 had viral loads greater than 500 copies. One critism of the study suggested that the switch was late, and patients should have been swithched earlier. An AGPH press release indicated that AGPH (a study by Dr. Henry) had seen a similar result in patients that had initially failed prior therapies, were successfully treated with Viracept, and switch to another PI when the Viracept therapy failed. These patients seemed to have been switch even later (230,000 copies) and 4 out of 7 failed to acheive viral reductions to 500 copies (or if they did get below 500 it was for a very brief time). I thought that the two studies produced similar results (Patients who had been treated previously with other agents and failed treatment, were then successfully treated with Viracept, and were then switch to another PI after Viracept failure, saw failure rates - more than 500 copies after 1 month of treatment - in more than 50% of the patients - 75% in one small (8 patient) study and 57% in another small (7 patient) study. Thus, my question is how other PIs fared under similar situations (patient failed prior non-PI therapy, switch to a PI other than Viracept, failed that PI, and then switched to another PI such as Viracept). Was the failure rate (more than 500 copies a month after starting the new PI) markedly worse than seen with Viracept i.e. is there any in vivo data for patients that were started on Viracept after failing non-PI therapies showing that these patients did better than similar patients who used another PI as their first PI choice? |
