Clinical research
Where we have been and where we are going When I started my career in the late 1990s, being on HIV medication meant taking a handful of pills (four to six tablets) two to three times a day, along with another handful of pills to control nausea, vomiting, diarrhea and neuropathy.
My patients would take these cocktails of pills before a meal, after a meal or “as a meal.” Many of them did so gladly. The days when an HIV diagnosis was a death sentence were just barely a few years behind us, and those handfuls of pills were a lifeline for a community of people that had been through much sorrow and pain.
But HIV therapy at that time did not work for everyone. Unable to cope with the pill burden and the side effects, many still succumbed to their disease.
But with each passing year, new options appeared, and the medications became easier and easier to tolerate. Today, most people living with HIV can be treated with single daily tablet regimens, a combination of two tablets taken once daily or, increasingly, medications that can be administered by injection every one-to-two months.
