This new treatment will improve the daily lives of people with HIV. Since Tuesday, December 21, these patients can benefit from an intramuscular injection every two months instead of taking tablets every day. But not all people with HIV are eligible.
- In 2020, 4,900 French people discovered that they had HIV.
- Since December 21, AIDS patients can receive an intramuscular injection every two months to replace the tablets to be taken every day.
The treatment of HIV infection is based on a combination of several antiretroviral drugs. This combination therapy prevents the virus from multiplying in the body. Problem: this method is restrictive for HIV-positive patients. And for good reason, some patients sometimes forget to take the tablets every day, which promotes the development of the virus. To make life easier for patients, researchers have developed a new treatment to contain HIV infection. It is an intramuscular injection of two antiretrovirals (cabotegravir and rilpivirine).
One injection every two months
This treatment, authorized by the European Medicines Agency and reimbursed by National Health Insurance, is to be carried out every two months. It must be injected into each buttock. The first three injections must take place in the hospital. The other injections can be administered at the home of the patient with AIDS by a nurse. A total of six injections should be performed each year.
A treatment prescribed only to certain patients
Since December 21, patients suffering from HIV, who wish, can be prescribed these injections. But not all of them qualify. “Treatment is only for patients who have been well controlled and for some time, with oral therapy, who do not have a resistance mutation to these drugs, no co-infection with the virus of hepatitis B”explained to France InterJean-Michel Molina, head of the infectiology department at the Saint-Louis hospital in Paris, at the beginning of December.
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