Odyssey project. Dr. Pablo Rojo – ©2022 October 12 Hospital
Dolutegravir is a pill to treat HIV infection capable of controlling the symptoms of AIDS and that has great advantages for pediatric patients because it dissolves in water and has a strawberry flavor, so that children with the disease have it easier to follow the treatment. The drug is also cheap and does not need to be kept cold. For all these reasons, the World Health Organization has chosen it as the first treatment option for babies and children with AIDS from four weeks of life.
A study led by the Research Institute of the Hospital Universitario 12 de Octubre i+12 has shown that these soluble, strawberry-flavored pills are safe and more effective for treating HIV infection in children weighing less than 20 kilos than previously known therapies.
The results of the research, which have been published in the Lancet HIV, have confirmed that this therapeutic option will help control AIDS in children thanks to being based on a drug with a pleasant taste and easy to take and whose price is affordable, which which will facilitate its distribution, especially in some African countries where the incidence of AIDS is very high in the child population.
Adherence to AIDS treatment improves with dissolvable pills
Dr. Pablo Rojo Conejo, pediatrician at the Pediatric Clinical Trials Unit (UPIC) of the Hospital 12 de Octubre and co-investigator of the Odyssey Project, explained that in this trial they have “recruited more than 700 children from Spain, England, Thailand and, above all, Sub-Saharan Africa, which is where most of the children with HIV live”. “This essay – he continues – that treatment with dolutegravir in children living with HIV is the best treatment strategy in Spain, but also throughout the world”.
“It is a very small tablet, only 5 mg, which is dispersed in water and has shown excellent safety and efficacy in young children, up to three kilos and four weeks old”
“We have carried out a worldwide trial that has shown that it is more effective, but at the same time, the strawberry-flavored water-dispersible tablets are much better tolerated in children than the treatments that have existed until now.” “It is a very small tablet, only 5 mg, which is dispersed in water and has shown excellent safety and efficacy in young children. Even children weighing three kilos and four weeks old can take it like this”.
In Dr. Rojo’s opinion, the results of the Odyssey study show that treatment based on this drug should be the first choice because it is more effective and easier to administer, and because it will also be marketed at an affordable price, since to an agreement for its production as a generic drug for low-income countries.
46% of children with HIV do not receive treatment
UNAIDS data reveals that in 2020 there were 1.7 million children with HIV in the world, of which 46% – that is, almost half – were not receiving treatment. According to UNICEF, Sub-Saharan Africa accounts for 89% of new pediatric HIV infections and 88% of children and adolescents suffering from HIV worldwide, and it is also in this area of the planet that 88 % of infant deaths linked to AIDS.
Girls are six times more likely to be infected with HIV than boys. Global coverage of antiretroviral treatment remains much lower for children compared to pregnant women (85%) and adults (74%). The highest percentage of boys and girls receiving antiretroviral treatment is found in South Asia (>95%), followed by the Middle East and North Africa (77%), East Asia and the Pacific (59%), East and Southern Africa (57%), Latin America and the Caribbean (51%) and West and Central Africa (36%).
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