RESEARCH ARTICLE
A Multicenter, Open Labeled, Randomized, Phase III Study Comparing Lopinavir/Ritonavir Plus Atazanavir to Lopinavir/Ritonavir Plus Zidovudine and Lamivudine in Naive HIV-1-Infected Patients: 48-Week Analysis of the LORAN Trial
K.U Ulbricht1, §, G.M Behrens1, §, M Stoll1, B Salzberger2, H Jessen3, A.B Jessen3, B Kuhlmann4, H Heiken4, A Trein5, R.E Schmidt*, 1
Article Information
Identifiers and Pagination:
Year: 2011Volume: 5
First Page: 44
Last Page: 50
Publisher ID: TOAIDJ-5-44
DOI: 10.2174/1874613601105010044
Article History:
Received Date: 22/1/2010Revision Received Date: 15/7/2010
Acceptance Date: 13/1/2011
Electronic publication date: 22/4/2011
Collection year: 2011

open-access license: This is an open access article licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/) which permits unrestricted, non-commercial use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the work is properly cited.
Abstract
Objective:
The primary aim of the study was to compare the metabolic side effects of a nucleoside analogue-containing regimen with a nucleoside analogue-sparing double protease inhibitor regimen. A secondary goal was to test for efficacy of a double-PI regimen.
Design:
Multicenter, randomized, open-label, phase III clinical trial.
Subjects:
Adult HIV-1-infected individuals naïve to antiretroviral therapy with viral load above 400 HIV-RNA copies/ml were randomized (1:1) to either 400 mg lopinavir /100 mg ritonavir (LPV/r) BID plus 150 mg lamivudine/300 mg zidovudine (CBV) BID versus LPV/r BID plus 300 mg atazanavir (ATV) QD. Main outcome measure was the virologic failure in both groups, defined as viral load ≥50 copies/ml at week 48.
Results:
In the CBV/LPV/r-arm, 29 out of 35 patients [(83%; 95% confidence interval (CI) 66.9-92.2%] and 18 out of 40 patients (45%; 95% CI 29.7-61.5%) in the ATV/LPV/r-arm had a HIV-RNA level <50 copies/ml at week 48. The intent-to-treat analysis revealed inferior virologic response in the ATV/LPV/r arm (Chi-Q and Fisher´s Exact Test p<0.001) and resulted in premature termination of the trial. Eleven patients in the ATV/LPV/r-arm discontinued therapy because of virological failure. These failures mostly presented with low level replication (<1,000 copies/ml). Increases in CD4 cell counts was significantly more rapid in the ATV/LPV/r arm (p=0.02), but comparable at week 48.
Conclusions:
ATV/LPV/r had less virologic efficacy than the conventional RTI-based regimen and resulted in a high virological failure rate with low level replication.