• Thomas B Campbell, Laura M Smeaton, N Kumarasamy, Timothy Flanigan, Karin L Klingman, Cynthia Firnhaber, Beatriz Grinsztejn, Mina C Hosseinipour, Johnstone Kumwenda, Umesh Lalloo, Cynthia Riviere, Jorge Sanchez, Marineide Melo, Khuanchai Supparatpinyo, Srikanth Tripathy, Ana I Martinez, Apsara Nair, Ann Walawander, Laura Moran, Yun Chen, Wendy Snowden, James F Rooney, Jonathan Uy, Robert T Schooley, Victor De Gruttola, James Gita Hakim, and PEARLS study team of the ACTG.
• Division of Infectious Diseases, Department of Medicine, University of Colorado School of Medicine, Aurora, United States of America. thomas.campbell@ucdenver.edu
• PLoS Med. 2012 Jan 1; 9 (8): e1001290e1001290.

BackgroundAntiretroviral regimens with simplified dosing and better safety are needed to maximize the efficiency of antiretroviral delivery in resource-limited settings. We investigated the efficacy and safety of antiretroviral regimens with once-daily compared to twice-daily dosing in diverse areas of the world.Methods And Findings1,571 HIV-1-infected persons (47% women) from nine countries in four continents were assigned with equal probability to open-label antiretroviral therapy with efavirenz plus lamivudine-zidovudine (EFV+3TC-ZDV), atazanavir plus didanosine-EC plus emtricitabine (ATV+DDI+FTC), or efavirenz plus emtricitabine-tenofovir-disoproxil fumarate (DF) (EFV+FTC-TDF). ATV+DDI+FTC and EFV+FTC-TDF were hypothesized to be non-inferior to EFV+3TC-ZDV if the upper one-sided 95% confidence bound for the hazard ratio (HR) was ≤1.35 when 30% of participants had treatment failure. An independent monitoring board recommended stopping study follow-up prior to accumulation of 472 treatment failures. Comparing EFV+FTC-TDF to EFV+3TC-ZDV, during a median 184 wk of follow-up there were 95 treatment failures (18%) among 526 participants versus 98 failures among 519 participants (19%; HR 0.95, 95% CI 0.72-1.27; p = 0.74). Safety endpoints occurred in 243 (46%) participants assigned to EFV+FTC-TDF versus 313 (60%) assigned to EFV+3TC-ZDV (HR 0.64, CI 0.54-0.76; p<0.001) and there was a significant interaction between sex and regimen safety (HR 0.50, CI 0.39-0.64 for women; HR 0.79, CI 0.62-1.00 for men; p = 0.01). Comparing ATV+DDI+FTC to EFV+3TC-ZDV, during a median follow-up of 81 wk there were 108 failures (21%) among 526 participants assigned to ATV+DDI+FTC and 76 (15%) among 519 participants assigned to EFV+3TC-ZDV (HR 1.51, CI 1.12-2.04; p = 0.007).ConclusionEFV+FTC-TDF had similar high efficacy compared to EFV+3TC-ZDV in this trial population, recruited in diverse multinational settings. Superior safety, especially in HIV-1-infected women, and once-daily dosing of EFV+FTC-TDF are advantageous for use of this regimen for initial treatment of HIV-1 infection in resource-limited countries. ATV+DDI+FTC had inferior efficacy and is not recommended as an initial antiretroviral regimen.Trial Registrationwww.ClinicalTrials.gov NCT00084136. Please see later in the article for the Editors' Summary.

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