Switch to etravirine for HIV-positive patients receiving statin treatment: a prospective study. European Journal of Clinical Investigation
Ciaffi et al. tested one of the proposed strategies to manage patients with cardiovascular risk and hyperlipidemia. In this multicenter, one-arm, open label 12-week study, 31 HIV undetectable patients on statin were included. Statin treatment was stopped and 8 weeks later the antiretroviral drug possibly causing lipid increase (EFV or bPI) was replaced with etravirine (400 mg, 8 weeks) in 27 participants. At the end of the study not only patients had a significantly lower concentration of total and LDL cholesterol and triglycerides, but 56% of them did not qualify for statin treatment anymore according to EACS guidelines.
In addition, changes in pro-inflammatory cardiovascular biomarkers showed as well a favorable trend, suggesting possible future research focus.