Does transient therapy during primary HIV infection alter the viral set-point or disease progression?
Both randomized montherapy studies of short courses of zidouvudine failed to show any long-term benefits in delaying progression to AIDS. In one open-label study of eight subjects, which involved therapy for 383 to 1081 days, apparent control of viraemia (to However, two more recent open-label studies of transient therapy suggested that treating PHI does not influence viral set-points. Markowitz and colleagues treated 16 patients for more prolonged periods (931-1822 days), with 11 of these patients also receiving therapeutic vaccinations before discontinuing therapy. They reported that viral loads stabilized Taken together these studies suggest that, although individual patients may improve control of HIV, transient treatment of PHI does not significantly influence viral replication levels compared with cohorts of seroconverters from earlier natural history cohorts. However, both the natural history cohorts used in these comparisons contained more asymptomatic seroconvertors, who would
