Drug levels and HIV

July 2001     View PDF     En español

Commentary

There’s a strong likelihood that advances in the field of pharmacology can result in greatly improving patient management by optimizing anti-HIV drugs as well as reducing the risk of side effects. TDM may provide another piece of useful information—along with CD4+ cell counts, viral load and resistance testing—that can help assess the effectiveness of an anti-HIV regimen. However, many issues still have to be worked out before TDM can be used as part of routine care.

Much research still has to be done to fully understand how drugs interact with certain genes in our bodies and what impact this has on anti-HIV activity. Also, there needs to be an agreed upon standard for lab tests to measure this activity. Ultimately, only head-to-head studies of these drugs involving large numbers of people can determine whether one is more effective than another.