Drug Resistance Lowering

VANCOUVER — A new B.C. study shows a dramatic decrease in the number of HIV patients developing resistance to anti-retroviral drugs.

“This is good news, with big implications,” said the study’s author, Dr. Richard Harrigan.

The BC Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS research shows a dramatic decrease in the number of HIV patients in B.C. developing resistance to anti-retroviral drugs.

When treatments keep the virus from replicating, the disease doesn’t progress, said Harrigan. “If you develop resistance, you’re in trouble.”

HIV positive Vancouver artist Tiko Kerr was near death five years ago because of drug resistance.

“You can’t imagine what it’s like to be given your life back,” said Kerr, who has been HIV positive for 25 years.

Kerr was one of five seriously ill B.C. HIV patients who had to fight to get what were then experimental treatments — their last chance for survival.

“Within the first five days of my new treatment in 2006, my viral load was reduced 90 per cent.”

Harrigan attributed the decline in new cases of drug resistance to “steady improvement” over the years.

“In the early days, people would have to take 30 pills a day,” said Harrigan. “Now it’s often just one pill a day.”

The study, published in the Jan. 1 edition of Clinical Infections Diseases, reports that from 1996-2008 there has been a 12-fold decrease in drug resistance.

“The main thing that we saw is that the HAART therapies (highly active antiretroviral therapy) are becoming more successful every year in keeping the level of virus in patients down below the level we can even detect.

“That prevents the virus from replicating, from making copies of itself and the disease doesn’t progress,” Harrigan said.

It also means less drug-resistant HIV is being passed on “from patient A to patient B.”

The 10-year-long study involved 5,500 patients.

Vancouver Sun

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