Experts from the pharmaceutical company Lynda have published a study of a new form of delivery of antiretroviral drugs - tablets based on a polymer matrix. Such a system would allow HIV-infected people to take medication only once a week.
Patients with HIV are forced to take antiretroviral drugs throughout their lives, adhering to a strict schedule (not only the day is important, but also the hour of taking the medicine). Failure to adhere to the medication schedule affects the effectiveness of retroviral therapy. Doctors warn about this, but despite the warnings, deviations from the admission schedule at least once allow up to a third of patients with HIV. Violation of the medication regimen often leads to the development of immunodeficiency virus resistance to existing drugs. The viral load at the end of the therapeutic course is directly proportional to the number of missed medications; it is not possible to compensate for the missing drug.
Placing the active substance on a polymer matrix allows you to administer a weekly dose of the drug at one time, orally. Once in the body, the matrix releases small amounts of the substance evenly and gradually over seven days. So far, the effectiveness of the new delivery method has been tested only on animals and using mathematical modeling. The latter showed that the matrices are able to maintain the required amount of the active substance in the body for seven days after taking a single tablet.
Researchers have shown the ability of the new polymer matrix-based delivery system to work with three key antiretroviral drugs - the integrase inhibitors doluteglavir and cabotegravir and the reverse transcriptase inhibitor rilpivirine. These drugs have worked well in combination with others; The greatest effectiveness of antiretroviral therapy is achieved with the concurrent administration of three types of drugs - nucleoside and non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors and protease (or integrase) inhibitors.
Scientists have also modeled the effect that the emergence of matrix pills could have on large statistics; Simulations have shown that reducing antiretroviral drug errors can prevent hundreds of thousands of new HIV infections, as well as reduce public and private spending on therapy when patients are deteriorating due to non-adherence to medication.
Modern drugs for highly active antiretroviral therapy allow HIV patients to live an active life, and life expectancy, subject to the rules of drug intake and other requirements, reaches 70 years. Complex HIV therapy during pregnancy can also reduce the number of cases of transmission of the virus to children from infected mothers (up to 1.2%).
The research is published in the journal Nature Communications.
Ksenia Malysheva
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