Report from ICAAC, 2006

Abstract

Coming so quickly after the International AIDS Society Conference, this year’s Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy (ICAAC) in San Francisco was, not surprisingly, something of an anticlimax for HIV clinicians. Indeed, the various HIV-specific meetings — not only the international conferences, but also the European AIDS Society Conference in Glasgow and, of course, the Retrovirus Conference — have diminished the prominence of ICAAC as a venue for important new HIV research. The most important presentation on an investigational agent was the 24-week follow-up of Merck’s integrase inhibitor, MK-0518 [Abstract H-1670b]. In this randomized trial, Grinsztejn and colleagues compared three different doses of MK-0518 (200, 400, and 600 mg) with placebo in heavily treatment-experienced patients on optimized background therapy. Sixteen-week data, presented at CROI 2006, had documented far better responses with the various MK-0518 doses than with placebo. The 24-week data at ICAAC were even more impressive, not only because they showed longer-term efficacy, but also because of demonstrated benefits in patients with the most extensive baseline resistance, …