Dr Paul Sax Outlines Effective Treatments for Multidrug-Resistant HIV

Most patients with multidrug-resistant HIV can still be treated with existing therapies, explained Paul Sax, MD, clinical director of the Division of Infectious Diseases at Brigham and Women's Hospital and professor of medicine at Harvard University.

What are the most effective treatments for patients with multidrug-resistant HIV? Are there any new approaches being taken?

People who have multidrug resistant virus to HIV, most of them these days, the good news, can still be successfully be treated with our existing agents, the ones that are already FDA approved. The key sometimes is getting that person seen by an HIV specialist. This is really one of those areas where HIV expertise, clinical expertise, truly matters.

But, let’s imagine you have a patient who has seen that HIV expert and, still, they can’t be successfully treated because they have resistant virus. We do have a new tool, and that is the drug ibalizumab, which is an infusional monoclonal antibody that has activity against viruses that are resistant to all the other drug classes. So, that’s one potential option. There is also in clinical trials right now a drug called fostemsavir that’s not available yet but should be available in the not too distant future that could be used for that same patient population.