A MODEL BASED ANALYSIS OF ANTI-CD4 THERAPY AS ADJUVANT TO HAART INTERRUPTION

摘要

Interruption of Highly Active Antiretroviral Therapy -^sHAART can be for a variety of reasons. The reasons could be salvage therapy, autoimmunization or to reduce the total time that the patient is on therapy. The problem with HAART interruption is that the virus starts to rebound immediately following HAART cessation, and there is an associate decline in CD4{sup}+ T cell counts. There is therefore a need to employ other therapeutic options that will slow down the viral rebound and/or CD4{sup}+ T cell decline during HAART interruption. This paper presents a model based analysis of how the duration of HAART interruption can be extended by CD4{sup}+ T specific therapies, for patients who initiate therapy during the chronic infection stage. For these patients, the purpose of interruptions is primarily to reduce the time on HAART.