The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved a new tool in the fight against HIV with a two once-daily, fixed dose combination of pills utilizing previously approved single drugs Evotaz and Prezcobix reports hivplusmag.com. The combination of the protease inhibitor darunavir and boosting agent cobicistat, which raises the level of other antiretroviral drugs in the bloodstream, is what creates Prezcobix. Karen Tashima, a professor of medicine in infectious diseases with Brown University and one of the key lead investigators in a study that led to Prezcobix's approval, explained the relevance of this new development.
Said Tashima:
"This approval gives physicians the option of a Darunavir-based, fixed-dose combination tablet to treat adults living with the HIV-1 infection, which can help reduce the number of pills in their overall treatment regimen. Additional options remain an important medical priority to meet the diverse needs of those living with and managing this disease."
Evotaz assists in boosting Prezcobix's effectiveness, performing well in a 602-patient clinical trial with sustained effectiveness and safety over a 48-week period. Although a functional cure for the infectious disease is still being researched, several preventative and new treatment methods are steadily developing including a new discovery of a rarely occurring antibody produced within the body of HIV positive people, called 3BNC117, that reduces viral loads without the help of antiretroviral drugs. Early tests have shown that a single injection of the antibody into positive patients' (those who don't produce the rare antibody) dramatically decreased their viral loads and remained low for 28 days.
