This response was seen in over 90% of patients. These rates have never been attained in clinical trials of HIV patients living with drug-resistant virus.
Fuzeon is co-developed by Roche and Trimeris and is the first and only fusion inhibitor available for the treatment of HIV. MK-0518, the antiretroviral medicine used in the study, is a novel investigational integrase inhibitor being developed by Merck & Co.
These findings were said to be consistent with the recent HIV treatment guidelines. The guidelines emphasize undetectability as the goal of therapy, as well as the need to initiate multiple active anti-HIV agents simultaneously in order to achieve this goal.
“These exciting data with Fuzeon and MK-0518 show that when agents from two classes of anti-HIV drugs are used together, we can expect to achieve very high response rates which have only previously been observed in the most successful trials with treatment-naive patients,” said Richard Haubrich, professor of Medicine at the University of California.
According to a Merck, the most commonly reported study therapy-related side effects were diarrhea, nausea, fatigue, headache and itching. Four patients discontinued treatment due to adverse experiences.