Effectiveness

Studies that led to the approval of etravirine showed that when combined with darunavir/ritonavir plus at least two nucleoside analogues selected by resistance testing, etravirine was significantly more effective than placebo in suppressing viral load in treatment-experienced people with at least one NNRTI resistance mutation and three or more primary protease inhibitor mutations.¹ A subsequent study showed that etravirine was more effective in treatment-experienced people with fewer than three NNRTI mutations.²

Despite its impressive activity against NNRTI-resistant HIV, those findings showed that the more NNRTI resistance mutations a person has, the lower the viral load reduction. Individuals with no NNRTI resistance mutations at baseline had a median viral load reduction of nearly 3 logs after 34 weeks of etravirine treatment combined with an optimised background regimen. Those with three or more NNRTI mutations had a viral load reduction of less than a log.