The new class of drugs called integrase-inhibitors. Researchers at Merck Research Laboratories tested raltegravir a drug belongs to integrase-inhibitors, on 178 patients with advanced HIV. The patients in the study had been failing to improve on existing treatments and got positive results with raltegravir.
"Taken together with the results of raltegravir in another study, these data confirm that HIV-1 Integrase is a valid target for antiretroviral therapy," study authors said. "The promising efficacy and tolerability profile of raltegravir suggest that this drug has the potential to become an important component of combination treatment regimens used to treat heavily pretreated patients failing current therapies with multidrug-resistant virus and limited treatment options," they added.
Researchers are hopeful the new class of drugs will be able to solve the problem of treatment-resistant HIV strains.
