Epzicom Associated With More Side Effects In HIV/AIDS Patients Than Truvada
A recent study compared the efficacy and safety of two combination therapies used to treat HIV: Truvada (emitricitabine/tenofovir) and Epzicom (abacavir/lamivudine).
The results suggest that though the two therapies are comparable in efficacy, Epzicom is more likely to cause serious side effects than Truvada.
Compared to therapy with an individual drug, combination therapies can result in lower rates of treatment failure and patient fatality. There is also a smaller chance of developing antibiotic-resistant infectious bacteria.
Truvada is a combination therapy that includes the drugs Emtriva (emtricitabine) and Viread (tenofovir). Alternatively, Epzicom is a combination therapy that contains Ziagen (abacavir) and Epivir (lamivudine).
Viread and Ziagen were originally introduced to replace drugs used in antiretroviral therapy that were shown to cause irreversible damage to fat tissue. However, they have since been linked to other negative side effects.
Previous studies have shown Viread use may result in kidney or bone toxicity, a fragile bone condition resulting from decreased mineral content. Ziagen on the other hand is associated with serious cardiovascular risk.
In the current study, researchers examined 441 patients for development of serious non-AIDS conditions after treatment with either Truvada or Epzicom.
Overall, Epzicom use had a greater incidence of serious side effects. Epzicom users developed an average of 4.8 serious non-AIDS events per 100 patient-years compared to an average of 1.2 events for Truvada users.
According to the authors, this difference was mostly due to a higher rate of cardiovascular events among Epzicom users (2.2 compared to 0.3 events per 100 patient-years).
Both treatment strategies had comparable rates of sustained HIV suppression. Six percent of Epzicom users and four percent of Truvada users progressed to the next phase of HIV, while no patients developed AIDS using either therapy.
For more information on cardiovascular risk associated with Ziagen use, please see the related AIDS Beacon article. The study comparing Epzicom and Truvada use can be found in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases (abstract).
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