Paul Sax, MD, Reacts to Results of ATLAS & FLAIR Studies

Segment Description: Paul Sax, MD, clinical director in the Division of Infectious Diseases at Brigham and Women's Hospital, reacts to the ATLAS and FLAIR studies on long-acting injectable therapy.

Interview transcript (modified slightly for readability):

Contagion®: We got some exciting updates at CROI on long-acting injectables with the FLAIR and ATLAS studies. What is your reaction to the data that was presented?

Dr. Sax: "The good news is that the ATLAS and FLAIR studies both demonstrated that long-acting injectable cabotegravir plus rilpivirine given every 4 weeks was noninferior to continued oral therapy. That means that people who don't want to take pills, somehow can't take pills, or somehow prefer not to take pills now have another option for maintaining virologic suppression. The studies did differ a little bit because 1 of the studies took people who had been on treatment for years and the other one took people who had just recently started treatment, but the results were essentially the same. The only possible caveat to the study was that in 3 patients in both of the studies did develop resistance to the treatment even though they were adherent to the treatment. It just shows that no treatment is 100 percent effective and it's just something we're going to have to keep an eye on as we go further."

The study, “Long-Acting Cabotegravir + Rilpivirine for HIV Maintenance: FLAIR 48 Week Results,” was presented at the Annual Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI), held March 4-7, 2019, in Seattle, Washington.

The study, “Long-Acting Cabotegravir + Rilpivirine as Maintenance Therapy: ATLAS Week 48 Results,” was presented at the Annual Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI), on March 7, 2019, in Seattle, Washington.