Ten PIs have been approved by the FDA, including saquinavir, indinavir, ritonavir, nelfinavir, amprenavir, lopinavir, fosamprenavir, atazanavir, darunavir, and tipranavir.
6 Of these, ritonavir-boosted atazanvir, darunavir, fosamprenavir, and lopinavir regimens are preferred, with alternative regimens of ritonavir-boosted saquinavir or unboosted fosamprenavir or atazanavir.
6 Only ritonavir-boosted lopinavir is recommended as a preferred PI for children.
7 Alternatively, ritonavir-boosted atazanavir or fosamprenavir, as well as unboosted nelfinavir, are recommended.
7 Of these agents, lopinavir coformulated with ritonavir is available as a pediatric oral solution and as tablets, and is approved for children 2 weeks of age and older.
7 Fosamprenavir and nelfinavir are also available as pediatric suspensions, and are approved for use in children 2 years of age and older.
7 Atazanavir is available in a pediatric capsule formulation, and is approved for use in children 6 years of age and older.
7Darunavir Of the PIs, both darunavir and tipranavir are able to maintain antiviral activity against many PI-resistant HIV-1 strains. Resistance to darunavir has been associated with 11 mutations (V11I, V32I, L33F, I47V, I50V, I54L, I54M, G73S, L76V, I84V, and L89V).
48 One study demonstrated that over 20% of treatment failures were associated with the V32I and I54L mutations.
49 Darunavir exhibits high-affinity binding properties, in addition to strong chain interactions and potential hydrogen bonding with both the HIV-1 protease, as well as mutant proteases.
50,
51 This allows for greater activity against resistant strains as compared with other PIs. Furthermore, darunavir-resistant strains need to undergo multiple simultaneous mutations to overcome darunavir binding affinity.
50A darunavir-ritonavir combination is FDA-approved for the treatment of HIV infection in children 6 years and older weighing at least 20 kg.
52 In adult and adolescent patients, darunavir–ritonavir is recommended as a preferred PI therapy to start in ARV-naïve patients.
6 In pediatric patients, darunavir is recommended as a second-line treatment option after failure of initial therapy due to the high pill burden required in children weighing less than 40 kg.
7 However, it is also suggested that darunavir may be an option for ARV-experienced pediatric patients.
7 Currently, darunavir is available as 75 mg, 150 mg, 300 mg, 400 mg, and 600 mg.
52 The monthly cost of darunavir for a patient receiving 600 mg twice daily is $990.
The most commonly reported adverse events with darunavir include diar rhea (32%), nausea (18%), nasopharyngitis (12%), headache (11%), and upper respiratory tract infection (10%).
53 Tipranavir Like darunavir, tipranavir is a nonpeptidic PI, with an increased flexibility at the binding portion of the molecule.
54 This increased flexibility results in a greater ability to overcome conformational changes in the protease enzyme due to mutations. Nonpeptidic PIs also act to prevent dimerization of the protease, preventing its activity through multiple pathways.
55 These advantages have been demonstrated in its maintenance of a relatively low IC
90 when tested against HIV-1 strains which had been made highly resistant to ritonavir.
56 Interestingly, tipranavir, like other PIs, has been shown to modulate
Pneumocystis carinii growth.
57Several predictors of response have been evaluated for tipranavir. One of the earliest predictors studied was the number of baseline PI mutations. There are seven mutations which are major determinants of tipranavir resistance, ie, L33F, I47V, Q58E, T74P, V82L, V82T, and I84V.
8 There are also 14 mutations which play a minor role in conferring tipranavir resistance, ie, L10V, I13V, K20M, K20R, E35G, M36I, K43T, M46L, I54A, I54M, I54V, H69K, N83D, and L90M.
8 It has been found that patients with viruses with two or fewer universal PI-associated mutations are significantly more likely to achieve virologic response.
58,
59 A derivation of counting mutations is the tipranavir mutation score, whereby a genotyping is performed, and the mutations conferring reduced
in vitro or
in vivo tipranavir susceptibility or response are counted.
60 This measure was found to be highly variable, and had poor correlation with virologic response.
60 Patients achieving a trough concentration of at least 15 μM achieved a −1.1 log
10 viral load reduction.
61 In a small retrospective analysis of 29 adult patients, tipranavir trough levels were found to be significantly higher in patients achieving a virologic response (
P = 0.03).
62 This, however, was not significantly associated with virologic response when analyzed using logistic regression (
P = 0.17).
63 The unbound tipranavir IC
90 and IC
50 are 0.1 μM and 0.03–0.07 μM, respectively.
54,
64Less traditional predictors of response have also been assessed. The genotypic sensitivity score, sometimes referred to as an optimized background score considers the number of drugs in the optimized background regimen which have been shown to be active through genotypic testing.
65–
67 For adult patients with a genotypic sensitivity score of ≥2, 64.2% achieved a virologic response, compared with a 20% virologic response rate for those with a score <2.
66 This trend was not observed in pediatric patients, possibly due to the small number of patients enrolled, and very few having a genotypic sensitivity score of ≥2.
67 An inhibitory quotient is calculated by dividing the tipranavir trough by the tipranavir IC
50.
68–
70 A general breakpoint might be thought of as >50–60, because two analyses found that most patients (81%) above this level achieved at least a −1 log
10 viral load reduction.
68,
69 Another analysis found that an inhibitory quotient of ≥76 had a response rate of 64%, whereas an inhibitory quotient <76 had a response rate of 29%.
70The genotypic inhibitory quotient (gIQ) is calculated by dividing the tipranavir serum trough concentration by the number of tipranavir resistance conferring mutations genotyped from the patient’s HIV strain.
62,
63,
66,
67,
70 The measure of gIQ had the highest correlation with virologic success in both children and adults. When correlating gIQ, tipranavir trough, tipranavir mutation score, use of enfuvirtide, and genotypic sensitivity score with virologic response in adult patients using logistic regression, gIQ was found to be the most significant predictor of virologic response (
P = 0.03).
63 At 48 weeks, a significantly greater reduction in viral load was observed in adult patients who had a gIQ > 14,500 ng/mL/mutation (83.3% versus 38.4%).
66 At 48 weeks, pediatric patients with a gIQ above the first quartile (0.56–7.19) were more likely to achieve a viral load of <400 copies/mL (8% versus 52–68%).
67 A more recent assessment of gIQ found that patients with more than eight tipranavir resistance mutations were unlikely to achieve a virologic response, regardless of the tipranavir trough level.
62The pharmacokinetics of a tipranavir–ritonavir combination have been studied in both adult and pediatric patients. Like many other PIs, tipranavir is metabolized via the cytochrome (CYP) p450 3A4 isozyme.
71 Tipranavir should always be coadministered with ritonavir because of its known inhibition of CYP 3A4 metabolism, resulting in a boosting effect. This is important because tipranavir alone strongly induces its own metabolism, producing trough concentrations less than 5% of those produced by the combination.
72 The understanding of the overall effects of the tipranavir–ritonavir combination on CYP p450 has been recently expanded to include an initial and steady-state phase.
73 Upon initiating tipranavir–ritonavir, the ritonavir component results in strong inhibition of hepatic and, possibly, intestinal CYP 3A4 and 5, along with p-glycoprotein.
73 This eventually balances with the inductive effects of tipranavir to a moderate inhibition of hepatic and strong inhibition of intestinal CYP 3A4 and 5, with little effect on p-glycoprotein.
73Tipranavir is highly protein-bound, with >99.9% of the drug bound to albumin or α-1-acid glycoproteins.
56 In order to assure adequate absorption, the capsule formulation of tipranavir should be administered with a high-fat meal.
74 The oral solution has been found to be unaffected by this dietary consideration.
75The primary adult efficacy data comes from two Randomized Evaluation of Strategic Intervention in multiresistant patients with Tipranavir (RESIST-1 [US and Australia; n = 620] and RESIST-2 [Europe and Latin America; n = 539]) trials, both of which had the same study design.
76,
77 Patients included were HIV-1 infected adults with a baseline viral load of at least 1000 copies/mL, at least one primary PI mutation corresponding to baseline PI therapy, with no more than two resistance-associated PI mutations. All patients were assessed by clinicians prior to randomization using genotypic testing to determine an appropriate PI, NRTI, and NNRTI regimen. They were then randomized to receive an unblinded regimen of either tipranavir boosted with ritonavir or their previously selected comparator PI. The primary efficacy endpoint measured was the proportion of patients achieving at least a −1 log
10 viral load decrease. A higher proportion of patients receiving tipranavir achieved the primary endpoint in both the RESIST-1 (41.5% versus 22.3%;
P < 0.0001) and RESIST-2 trials (41% versus 14.9%;
P < 0.0001) at 24 weeks.
The efficacy of tipranavir has been studied in pediatric patients from the US, Europe, and Latin America.
78 This trial enrolled children 2–18 years of age who had a baseline viral load of more than 1500 copies/mL. Unlike the adult trial, treatment-naïve patients were also included and no resistance profile requirements were placed as criteria for enrollment. Children in this study were stratified by age into three categories, ie, 2–5, 6–11, and 12–18 years of age. The primary outcome for this study was safety and therefore it was not designed with sufficient power to measure efficacy outcomes. Nonetheless, viral loads as well as CD4 cell counts, were performed as secondary endpoints. As in the adult trial, patients were assigned an optimized background regimen prior to randomization. Patients in this noncomparator study received an unblinded regimen consisting of an optimized background regimen, including at least two other non-PIs as well as either low- (290/115 mg/m
2) or high-dose (375/150 mg/m
2) tipranavir–ritonavir, with an upper dosing limit equal to the adult dose of 500/200 mg.
At 48 weeks, 42.6% of all patients achieved a viral load of <400 copies/mL. In the high-dose group, 45.6% achieved viral loads <400 copies/mL compared with only 39.7% in the low-dose group. A mean viral load decrease of 1.24 log10 copies/mL and 0.8 log10 copies/mL was seen in the high- and low-dose groups, respectively. A trend toward better efficacy was seen in the high-dose group with respect to viral load reduction, although it was not statistically significant. As for immunologic response to therapy, a median increase in CD4+ T cell percentages was seen in both the high- (5% increase) and low-dose group (3% increase), although these values were not statistically different (P = 0.11). The immunologic response to therapy was greatest in the 2–5 year age group (10% and 6% for the low- and high-dose groups, respectively), likely due to the less resistant HIV strains of the younger children. Over the 48-week period, four patients developed AIDS-defining illnesses; all four had been receiving the low-dose regimen. The investigators concluded that there was a potential benefit of the high-dose regimen over the low-dose regimen.
A total of 78 study patients were continued on or switched to the high-dose regimen after 48 weeks. An abstract has been published to summarize the long-term safety and efficacy data gained from these patients over 100 weeks of high-dose therapy.
79 Overall, 38% of patients maintained a viral load of <400 copies/mL and 34% maintained an undetectable viral load of <50 copies/mL. The 2–5-year-old age group experienced the greatest virologic response, with 56% achieving a viral load of <400 copies/mL and 48% achieving an undetectable viral load of <50 copies/mL.
Tipranavir carries a black box warning for both fatal and nonfatal intracranial hemorrhage, because these have been seen in the adult population,
18 although these have not been observed in the pediatric or adolescent populations.
78 Black box warnings also indicate a risk for clinical hepatitis and hepatic decompensation in patients with chronic hepatitis B or C coinfection.
18 This subset of patients has been excluded from pediatric and adolescent tipranavir studies, and should apply to these populations as well. Recently, a study analyzing electrocardiograms demonstrated only clinically insignificant changes in corrected QT interval, with a maximum observation of 8.3 milliseconds for healthy patients receiving a supratherapeutic dose of tipranavir 750 mg.
18For the pediatric and adolescent populations, safety endpoints have been reported based on the Division of AIDS standardized toxicity grading table.
80 The 48-week safety outcomes were not out of the ordinary, with 53.9% of patients experiencing a drug-related adverse event, 25.2% of patients experiencing a serious adverse event, and 8.7% patients discontinuing use of the study drug due to an adverse event.
78 The most commonly reported adverse events were nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, and headache. An increased risk of bleeding was also described in the pediatric and adolescent study.
78 When considering laboratory abnormalities, elevations in gamma-glutamyl transpeptidase and alanine transaminase led to discontinuation of tipranavir in four patients.
78A subanalysis from the RESIST trials assessed health-related quality of life in patients receiving tipranavircontaining regimens versus those receiving a comparator protease.
81 It was found that changes in health-related quality of life from baseline were similar between groups.
Currently, tipranavir in combination with ritonavir is FDA-approved for use in patients 2 years of age and older, who are treatment-experienced and infected with an HIV-1 strain clinically resistant to more than one PI.
18 The European Medicines Agency has given a positive opinion for tipranavir use in highly pretreated adolescents (>12 years old) with evidence of resistance to multiple PIs, and also in highly pretreated children aged 2–12 years. The tipranavir–ritonavir combination is not currently recommended as initial therapy according to the adult and adolescent guidelines.
6