Comparative risk of failure of ABC/3TC or TDF/FTC based first‐line regimens in patients with a high viral load

ObjectivesTo compare the efficacy, in current clinical practice, of ă first regimens containing abacavir with lamivudine (ABC/3TC) or ă tenofovir with emtricitabine (TDF/FTC) in patients with baseline viral ă load 100000 HIV-1 RNA copies/mL. ă MethodsUsing a prospective cohort, we selected all patients starting a ă first HIV regimen based either on ABC/3TC or on TDF/FTC. The propensity ă score (PS) method was used to limit the indication bias due to the ă observational nature of the data. Adjusting and weighting methods via PS ă were used to compare the effectiveness of a first regimen containing ă ABC/3TC or TDF/FTC. The primary outcome was treatment failure by month ă 12 (M12). ă ResultsOverall, 2781 patients started an antiretroviral (ARV) regimen ă with ABC/3TC or TDF/FTC each in combination with efavirenz, boosted ă atazanavir or boosted darunavir. Among the 2472 uncensored patients ă before M12, 962 (39%) had a baseline viral load 100000 copies/mL of ă whom 294 were in treatment failure at or before M12. Our analyses showed ă no difference between ABC/3TC and TDF/FTC in the risk of treatment ă failure at M12 in patients starting an ARV regimen with a high viral ă load (100000 copies/mL). ă ConclusionsUsing a large prospectively collected cohort of patients ă seeking care in France, we found no evidence that ABC/3TC based regimens ă led to more failures than TDF/FTC based ones in patients with high ă baseline viral loads.