CONTEXT Abacavir, a nucleoside analogue, has demonstrated suppression of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) replication alone and in combination therapy. However, the role of abacavir in a triple nucleoside combination regimen has not been evaluated against a standard protease inhibitor-containing regimen for initial antiretroviral treatment. OBJECTIVE To evaluate antiretroviral equivalence a...

There are several reports of Fanconi syndrome (FS) with or without nephrogenic diabetes insipidus (NDI) in patients with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection, treated with various antiretroviral medications like cidofovir, adefovir, didenosine and tenofovir. But neither FS nor NDI has been documented with abacavir therapy. We are reporting the first case of abacavir-induced reversible F...

To the Editor: Excess cardiovascular risk has been observed in HIV-infected patients, driven by traditional risk factors such as smoking, hypertension, diabetes, and aging, although therapy-induced hyperlipidemia and HIV-induced proinflammatory state and immune activation seem to play a role. A recent report from the Data Collection on Adverse Events of AntiHIV Drugs (DAD) Study, one of the lar...

Adult T cell leukemia (ATL) is an aggressive T cell malignancy caused by human T cell leukemia virus type 1 (HTLV-1) and has a poor prognosis. We analyzed the cytotoxic effects of various nucleoside analog reverse transcriptase inhibitors (NRTIs) for HIV-1 on ATL cells and found that abacavir potently and selectively kills ATL cells. Although NRTIs have minimal genotoxicities on host cells, the...

This cohort study was conducted amongst female patients manifesting lipoatrophy while receiving stavudine-containing first-line antiretroviral treatment regimens at two urban health centres in Rwanda. The objectives were to assess weight evolution after stavudine substitution and to describe any significant difference in weight evolution when zidovudine or tenofovir/abacavir was used for substi...

Abacavir (formerly 1592U89) is a potent 2'-deoxyguanosine analog reverse transcriptase inhibitor that has been demonstrated to have a favorable safety profile in initial clinical trials with adults with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) type 1 infection. A phase I study was conducted to evaluate the pharmacokinetics and safety of abacavir following the administration of two single oral doses (...

The main options for dual nucleoside (or nucleotide) analogue reverse transcriptase inhibitors (nRTIs) as a component of initial antiretroviral therapy regimens are tenofovir/emtricitabine, zidovudine/lamivudine, and abacavir/lamivudine as fixed-dose combinations. Resistance to nRTIs can limit usefulness of many of the drugs in the class. Investigation of triple nRTI regimens has shown that zid...

Abacavir has been at the center of research and clinical interest in the last two years. The frequency of the associated abacavir hypersensitivity syndrome has decreased substantially since the introduction of routine testing for the HLA-B*5701 allele; the activity of the drug in HIV-infected persons with HIV RNA values more than 100,000 copies/mL has been questioned; the possible increased ris...

BACKGROUND It remains unclear if certain antiretroviral medications, particularly abacavir, compromise response to HCV therapy. Such data could inform the selection of appropriate antiretrovirals in HIV/HCV-coinfected patients. The aim of this study was to determine if use of abacavir, as well as other antiretrovirals, was associated with reduced response to pegylated interferon (PEG-IFN) plus ...

BACKGROUND Observational and retrospective clinical trial cohorts have reported conflicting results for the association of abacavir use with risk of myocardial infarction (MI), possibly related to issues that may bias estimation of treatment effects, such as time-varying confounders, informative dropout, and cohort loss due to competing events. METHODS We analyzed data from 5056 individuals i...