The National Alliance of State and Territorial AIDS Directors (NASTAD) announced this month that state AIDS Drug Assistance Programs (ADAPs) are facing “a perfect storm” of financial stresses due to the economic recession.

The result has been budget shortfalls and a series of cutbacks in state ADAP programs around the country.

ADAPs are programs that provide antiretroviral drugs to low-income Americans living with HIV.

Although run by states, the majority of ADAP funding usually comes from the federal government through the Ryan White Program. State contributions typically account for 15…

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) last week announced the addition of updated drug interaction information to the prescribing information of all currently approved HIV protease inhibitors.

Protease inhibitors are a class of antiretroviral drugs that prevent HIV from replicating by blocking a necessary protein called protease.

Drugs in this class include Aptivus (tipranavir), Crixivan (indinavir), Invirase (saquinavir mesylate), Kaletra (lopinavir/ritonavir), Lexiva (fosamprenavir), Norvir (ritonavir), Prezista (darunavir), Reyataz (atazanavir), and Viracept (nelfinavir).

Although some of the drug interactions had been known for specific protease inhibitors, the added information…

The pharmaceutical company Abbott Laboratories announced last week that the United States Food and Drug Administration has approved once-daily dosing of their anti-HIV medication, Kaletra (lopinavir/ritonavir) for adult patients who have previously taken antiretroviral therapy (ART).

Kaletra belongs to a class of anti-HIV drugs known as protease inhibitors. It is used in combination therapy to reduce the amount of HIV in the blood and to increase the number of CD4 cells in the body.

Once-daily dosing of Kaletra was already indicated for adult HIV patients new to ART. However,…