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New HIV drug brings hope

Iain Clacher
with Rachel Cook and Katrina Fox


The relatively side-effect free HIV drug raltegravir will soon be available through the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme.

The first of a promising new class of HIV drugs with few reported side effects has been approved for Australian access though the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme.

Known as raltegravir (an integrase inhibitor marketed as Isentress) the drug is currently available only to people in whom HIV has grown resistant to all other existing therapies.

“These are the people who have been excellent patients and have done what was recommended, but they have suffered because we didn’t have the right drugs,” Professor David Cooper, director of the National Centre in HIV Epidemiology and Clinical Research told MCV.

“This new drug and some of the other drugs have been an amazing change for these people,” he continued. “It works by blocking an enzyme that allows the virus to enter into the human genetic material and stay there forever.”

Cooper said the drug’s manufacturer, Merck, was sponsoring a study to see if people initiating anti-HIV treatments would also benefit from raltegravir.

“If that looks good compared to the bog standard treatments, there will be wider access, but that’s still a year or two away,” he explained.

Cooper added that trials of the drug had shown “remarkably few side-effects”.

“Most people - and we have 100 to 200 at St Vincent’s [Darlinghurst] - don’t seem to know they’re taking it. Compared to protease inhibitors, which can cause a range of gastro-intestinal problems and induce nausea, they are extremely well tolerated, and nausea is one of the main reasons some people don’t stick to the treatments,” Cooper concluded.

Brett Hayhoe, the president of People Living with HIV/AIDS Victoria (PLWHA), told MCV that raltegravir “looks very good”.

“One of the things we have found in the HIV sector is that people with HIV have become drug resilient, and particular regimes aren’t working for them anymore. We are finding with more and more of the new drugs that are coming onto the market that more research has been done and there are less side effects associated them,” he said.

The 450 Australians already obtaining the drug free of charge through an expanded access program will be able to access it through the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) from August 1.

“Having [raltegravir] on the PBS makes  them a lot more affordable to the majority of HIV-positive people, remembering that a lot of HIV positive people are living on or below the poverty line already and simply could not have access to these drugs if they were not on the PBS,” Hayhoe concluded.

In related news, the NSW government is to provide $20 million towards the establishment of a $120 million state-of-the-art national HIV research centre in Sydney. The funding will help establish the National Institute for Virology, which will bring together 300 of the nation’s top scientists working on HIV/AIDS research.

“This facility…will consolidate the world-class research capacity of the National Centre in HIV Epidemiology and Clinical Research (NCHECR) in HIV research and medicine,” said NSW Premier Morris Iemma.

The new institute will be located at St Vincent’s Hospital in Darlinghurst.

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