Raltegravir in treatment naïve patients

Raltegravir is the first integrase inhibitor approved for the treatment of HIV infection based on the superior efficacy it showed compared to optimized backbone therapy alone in patients harboring multidrug resistant viruses. Studies on naive patients showed comparable efficacy of raltegravir and efavirenz and just recently the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved raltegravir for the use in naive patients based on the favorable results of the international double-blind phase III STARTMRK trial. Additional interesting findings were the faster, and not yet explained, decay of HIV-1 RNA and the higher CD4+ cells increase in the raltegravir group as compared to the efavirenz group. Raltegravir is generally well tolerated and adverse events were generally similar in raltegravir and comparator arms throughout all studies. When compared to efavirenz, patients on raltegravir showed less incidence of central nervous system-related adverse events. In studies on experienced patients higher incidence of cancers was found in the raltegravir arm: a relationship with the drug was, however not confirmed in a recent review considering all raltegravir studies. Raltegravir also showed a safe lipid profile especially in naive patients, finding that renders the drug attractive for patients with other cardiovascular risk factors. All this characteristics in association with its specific mechanism of action, make raltegravir an interesting drug for naive patients and a large use in this type of patients is predictable. Only time and experience, however, will tell us whether raltegravir will maintain its promises in the long run.