Saquinavir hard gel suppresses viral load insufficiently in HIV-infected patients naive to anti-retroviral therapy: A retrospective cohort study

Protease inhibitors are important components in anti-retroviral regimens. I n this retrospective study 29 HIV-infected patients treated with a regimen of zidovudine, lamivudine and saquinavir hard gel in 1 centre in Denmark me re compared with 58 patients treated with zidovudine, lamivudine and ritona vir or indinavir followed at 5 other centres in Scandinavia. All patients w ere naive to anti-retroviral therapy prior to institution of the actual ant i-retroviral regimen and were followed for a median of 1.3 and 1.4 y respec tively. The 2 groups did not differ significantly with respect to age, gend er, route of infection, ethnic background, viral load, CD4 count, AIDS at b aseline or frequency of clinical controls. Six and 12 months after initiati ng anti-retroviral therapy, 31% and 31% of the patients on the saquinavir r egimen obtained HIV-RNA less than or equal to 500 compared with 76% and 73% in the control group (p < 0.001). In contrast to viral lord, the increase in CD4 count did not differ significantly between the 2 groups. In conclusi on, we found that with respect to suppression of viral load a regimen of sa quinavir, zidovudine and lamivudine seemed to be inferior to a regimen of z idovudine, lamivudine and ritonavir or indinavir.