The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approves a new tablet formulation of Abbott's HIV protease inhibitor Kaletra (lopinavir/ritonavir), which will allow adult patients to take fewer pills with or without food as part of their treatment regimen.

Additionally, there will be no refrigeration requirements for the tablets. These benefits were not available with the old Kaletra capsules. The FDA says the standard daily doses of new Kaletra tablets and capsules provide similar drug levels in the blood.

Kaletra is the number one prescribed PI for the treatment of HIV worldwide and has been taken by hundreds of thousands of patients since being introduced in 2000.

FDA approval of the Kaletra tablet formulation is based on data from pharmacokinetic studies in 141 non-HIV infected, healthy individuals. The studies demonstrates Kaletra tablets provide similar drug levels in the blood to the capsule formulation. During the studies, Kaletra tablets were generally well tolerated.