Clinical use of raltegravir: a review

In the last 5 years there have been important achievements in the field of HIV therapy with the availability of new classes of antiretrovirals together with a new generation of old classes. Among them, the development of raltegravir, the first commercially available component of integrase inhibitors, brought an extraordinary improvement in salvage therapy for HIV-infected patients, allowing for virologic suppression even in multi-experienced subjects, who until recently had limited treatment options. It was subsequently approved for initial treatment combined with a nucleoside/nucleotide backbone, and also became an interesting option for naive HIV-infected populations. Its unique characteristics, the limited potential for significant pharmacokinetic interactions with other drugs and excellent safety profile have increased interest in its use in different settings.