An examination room is seen at the Oscar Centre in the Brooklyn borough of New York, US, on Wednesday, Dec. 7, 2016.
Monthly injections of two experimental drugs worked as well as a standard daily oral combination of three medicines in subduing HIV, according to a statement Thursday from ViiV Healthcare, a joint venture of companies led by GlaxoSmithKline. “Fewer medicines and fewer doses is ultimately what we’re offering patients,” Kim Smith, ViiV’s head of global research, said in an interview. The company’s strategy “has ushered in what we believe is now the two-drug era,” she said.
While the shots would provide a new option, some patients may see them as inconvenient, according to a report from analysts at HSBC last year. ViiV said its data show that almost all participants who got the long-acting treatment preferred it over a pill.