In the Future, a Patch for HIV Meds?

Researchers envision a day when people living with HIV won't have to remember to take bulky pills every day. Instead, they may be able to wear a patch similar to a nicotine patch for up to a week at a time that will deliver the anti-retroviral drugs they need through their skin, an Oct. 25 HealthDay story said.

The concept seems promising so far, the article said, but has yet to reach a testing phase with animals, much less human subjects. The new idea was investigated in a study funded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health.

The proposed patch could mean people living with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, could be freed up from the need to remember their medication on a daily basis. That, in turn, could translate to better health and help prevent viral breakthroughs, which is when a pathogen adapts to a treatment that then becomes ineffectual. Sporadic or incomplete courses of antibodies can promote quicker adaptation in disease-causing microorganisms.

There would only be a minimal impact on the cost of the drug supply for those opting to use the patch, researchers predicted.

"We are encouraged by these results, and we're ready to go to the next stage of developments," Anthony Ham of ImQuest BioSciences told the media. "These patches require a low cost to manufacture, have a high rate of release, and are able to inhibit HIV infection," the researcher continued.

Studies have shown that HIV positive people on an effective drug regimen are much less likely to infect others with the disease. For that reason, and because anti-retrovirals can have a much more beneficial effect if begun soon after infection, medical authorities advise everyone to know their HIV status and get treatment if they test positive.

Recent advances in medical science have already simplified the day-to-day necessities of sticking to an effective anti-retroviral regimen, the article noted.

"Patients with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, don't need to cope with the complicated regimens of earlier years that required them to take multiple pills at different times throughout the day," the article said. "Now, about 70 percent of newly treated patients in the United States take a single pill a day."

"Still, the important limitation of pills, regardless of how few there are or even how minimal the side effects, is adherence," Rowena Johnston of the Foundation for AIDS Research told the press. "The huge potential advantage of a patch, depending on how long it secretes the right level of drug, is the ability to maintain the right level of the drug without the fluctuations observed when adherence to pills is less than perfect."

The same medications that keep viral loads under control in people with HIV can also help protect HIV negative people, according to recent studies. Researchers suggested that the same patches that HIV positive people might one day wear could be used by HIV negative people as a means of fending off the virus.

Among the potential beneficiaries of such a new delivery method would be the negative spouses and life partners of HIV positive individuals.

"The concept is a good one, but I wonder whether there are fundamental difficulties behind nobody else having successfully developed these before," Johnston said.