Comparative evaluation of the applicability of fixed-dose combined drugs in HIV therapy

Abstract

The principal global pandemic is Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS), the early diagnosis and the premature treatment is the main current strategies in combating the development and spread of the disease. Antiretroviral therapy is effective and safe, what is sought nowadays is compliance and convenience for the patient. Different countries adopt different combinations of antiretroviral drugs when using the fixed-dose combination (FDC). The study design was a meta-analysis with clinical trials, patients experienced and naïve of treatment. The Pubmed, Scopus, Embase, Web of Science and Cochrane databases were searched for studies reporting AIDS treatment. The primary outcome was viral load and another outcome is adverse events. The results of the main analysis included 5224 patients. Since there was significant heterogeneity between studies, random effects were selected, and they showed an event rate of 0.67 (95%CI from 0.57 to 0.77). The exploratory analysis showed the general drug effects are not consistently significant along time, and treatments of longer times are more efficient. Specifically, the random analyses of 6 months and 1 year did not show significant drug effects on viral load, while a significant effect of 71% (95% CI from 0.61 to 0.80) in a very heterogeneous analyses (I2>96%). First, d4T-3TC-NVP showed a mean rate of only 21% efficacy and the second, EFV-TDF-FTC did not reach statistical significance (p=0.07). This meta-analysis shows that fixed-dose combination therapy is tolerability, safety and effective, occurred viral load suppression between patients on FDC.