HIV Support Group
HIV (also known as human immunodeficiency virus, and formerly known as HTLV-III and lymphadenopathy-associated virus) is a retrovirus that primarily infects vital components of the human immune system which can lead the syndrome known as AIDS. Many of the problems faced by people infected with HIV result from failure of the immune system to protect from opportunistic...
I have noticed that a LOT of people on the message board talk about taking Atripla. I know it is just one pill, which seems very convenient. My doctor put me on a combination of 3 different medications, which are working fine, but I am just wondering how they make the decisions about what to put us on. Since there are so many people on Atripla (at least on here) I am wondering if most doctors prescribe it over other meds, and if so, why?
With HIV being a retro virus, it is prone to mutating and evolving rapidly to gain resistance against a given drug or class of drugs (especially when treated with a Single drug, this is where "drug cocktails" have changed the game for HIV patients.
A resistance profile is basically a genetic comparison of the dominant population of HIV found in a patients bloodstream to the genetic makeup of a reference HIV-1 strain (aka, the "wild" variety.).
Specific mutations give The virus the ability to resist medication and guide the ID doctor to prescribe a drug cocktail that doesn't fit the resistance profile.
Atripla is actually a single dose cocktail of three different drugs.
Atripla is generally well tolerated (after the initial month or so..) by the majority of new HIV patients with no resistance and is therefor one of the more popular drugs since it allows for ease of dosing (which in turn improves adherence) and a relatively normal life for the patient involved.
This is key as HIV is possibly the most picky with respect to proper adherence. Given the chance to mutate by missing a dose or more and allowing the blood levels of any of the component medications to fall low enough, it will mutate.
The half lives of the three drugs involved in Atripla vary from 10 hours to 40 hours.