Switching to a weekly oral investigational regimen of islatravir and lenacapavir was just as effective as daily oral standard-of-care regimens in patients with virologically suppressed HIV, according to two phase III trials.
In the double-blind ISLEND-1 trial, 93.4% of patients who switched from once-daily, single-tablet bictegravir, emtricitabine, and tenofovir alafenamide (Biktarvy) to once-weekly, single-tablet islatravir and lenacapavir had HIV-1 RNA levels less than 50 copies/mL by week 48 versus 92.4% of those who continued to take the daily regimen.
No patients in the weekly group had HIV-1 RNA levels of 50 copies/mL or greater versus one patient in the daily group, reported Jürgen Rockstroh, MD, of University Hospital Bonn in Germany, at the International AIDS Conference in Rio de Janeiro.
The ISLEND-1 results were published simultaneously in the New England Journal of Medicine.
In the open-label ISLEND-2 trial, 95.2% of patients who switched from daily standard-of-care drugs to weekly islatravir and lenacapavir had HIV-1 RNA levels below 50 copies/mL by week 48 compared with 95.5% of those who remained on daily standard of care. The percentage of people with HIV-1 RNA levels of 50 copies/mL or greater was 0.3% and 1.3%, respectively, reported Amy Colson, MD, MPH, of the Cambridge Health Alliance in Massachusetts, in a separate presentation at the meeting.
