A radical change of life. Rather than ingesting a daily tablet – a protocol sometimes forgotten by patients – some people suffering from HIV can, since Tuesday and if they wish, follow a less restrictive treatment and based on an intramuscular injection to be performed every two months .
This concerns: HIV-positive people whose viral load has been under control for at least six months, and who would not be subject to certain antibiotics which prevent the delivery of this new treatment.
“It is only intended for patients who have been well controlled and for some time with oral treatment, who do not have a resistance mutation to these drugs, no co-infection with the virus. ‘hepatitis B’, specifies on France Inter Jean-Michel Molina, head of the infectious disease department at Saint-Louis hospital in Paris.
The injection is made up of two antiretrovirals, cabotegravir, and rilpivirine. The first three must take place in the hospital, the others can be administered at the patients’ homes by registered nurses. With a total value of 7,600 euros, the six annual bites are fully reimbursed by Medicare, as explained in the Official Journal of December 17.
In France, there are today around 180,000 AIDS patients. Worldwide, there are 38 million patients infected with HIV, according to figures dating from 2019 and issued by the WHO.