Combination Therapy for HIV Infection: Getting Closer

Excerpt

Persons infected with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), their health care providers, and clinical investigators have recently expressed considerable interest in the possibility that combination therapy with antiretroviral agents might prove more beneficial than treatment with these agents used alone. The intensity of this interest has been heightened by the fact that zidovudine, which, until recently, was the only drug licensed for the treatment of HIV infection, has proved unsuccessful in completely suppressing virus replication (1) and in controlling disease progression over extended periods (2). In addition, virus isolates with diminished in-vitro sensitivity to zidovudine have emerged (3, 4) after