Initiating HIV/AIDS Therapy in Treatment-Naïve Patients What do patients want from their HAART regimens?
	Enlarged Version of Graphics Below	Dr. Bellos (OC): The most important issues for patients in their initial regimens are tolerability, convenience, and low pill burden, which would go along with convenience. Dr. Bellos (VO): Also with respect to convenience, one would consider dosing frequency, and I think those are the things that patients look for. The other part of that is the issue of tolerability.   See Slide Dr. Bellos (OC): ...if you can use an initial regimen with a lower side effect profile, then patients are likely to be more adherent to that regimen, and, you will have the durability that you are looking for, that I'm looking for as a clinician. Dr. Kwakwa (OC): For my patients, the side effect profile tends to be more important than the frequency of dosing, and I can say that now because the dosing is either once a day or twice a day. Were three times a day an issue, it may not be the case that the side effect profile would be more important than the dosing frequency. Dr. Wohlfeiler (OC): Preferences, first of all, have changed enormously over the years. When I first started seeing HIV patients, patients were willing to take however many pills they needed to take, however many times a day with whatever meal restrictions. And it's just not that way any more.   See Slide Dr. Wohlfeiler (VO): Patients really want regimens that are no more than twice a day, preferably once a day. They want regimens that have the lowest number of pills involved that don't have food restrictions, water requirements, and things like that. Dr. Bellos (OC): Dietary restrictions in the initial regimen for some patients are important, for others are not. Again, it's a very individual decision. Dr. Kwakwa (OC): When it comes to antiretroviral medication, patients come in with the anticipation of being given large numbers of difficult-to-swallow pills that cause any variety of awful side effects, making them feel much worse than they did before they initiated the therapy. That is the expectation that patients come in with. Now, they have certain perceptions of the different medications that are currently available that they have heard about that they have interpreted one way or another, and so some may come in requesting not to be put on a particular medication, or asking for a certain medication based on those, or they may refuse to take a particular regimen based on that.
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