4. Discussion
weight gain, non-AIDS, AIDS infection, coronavirus disease 2019
ADVERSE EFFECTS, EVENTS, CORONAVIRUS DISEASE 2019
The efficacy and safety of DTG plus 3TC for treating virologically-suppressed PLWHIV without resistance mutations against DTG and 3TC were settled by the TANGO randomized clinical trial [Beyond this demographic data, in the intention-to-treat exposed population of the TANGO study, 344 patients (93.2%) had an HIV plasma viral load lower than 50 copies/mL at 48 weeks. In our cohort, in the intention-to-treat, 97.5% of patients achieved viral suppression of fewer than 50 copies/mL. Thus, our study confirms and reaffirms the results depicted in the pivotal clinical trial of DTG plus 3TC as a switch study, lining up with some other real-life data from smaller cohorts with similar results [Another relevant issue on behalf of DTG plus 3TC treatment is its safety, as severe adverse effects are rarely reported, leading to durability and infrequent switch to other treatment strategies due to adverse effects. Instead, central nervous system events are the most frequently reported AE leading to treatment discontinuation. This data correlates with the TANGO trial [A systematic review of the efficacy and safety of DTG plus 3TC from clinical trials and real-life cohorts [On behalf of CD4+ T cell count and CD4+/CD8+ ratio after switching, our study shows how CD4+ T cell count increased sequentially and significantly from baseline to 96 weeks. Remarkably, this increase was independent of sex, comorbidities, or pre-existing AIDS infection stage. In addition, a reduction in the absolute CD8+ value is also observed in the non-AIDS group.Our study was designed and carried out during the most challenging days of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, requiring extra effort by bedside clinicians. Thus, a simple and user-friendly database was developed with a small number of variables to recruit centers. Unfortunately, it led to several limitations that may have clinical implications. They include the study’s retrospective nature; a lack of clinically interesting data, such as body weight gain; and data regarding archived M184V, commonly missing in medical records. Nevertheless, it has undoubted strengths that complement the clinical trials’ data. First, it represents real-life data in the most challenging time of last decades, the COVID-19 pandemic, in which proper adherence to the treatment was probably tackled by many circumstances, adding additional stress to this treatment strategy in terms of performance. Furthermore, this issue probably makes this cohort a completely differential one, as the circumstances in which this dual strategy has been evaluated, with patients having problems accessing their medication or physicians, were unprecedented. These facts have been well described previously [