Early Simplified: A Trial to Compare the Efficacy of Standard of Care Combination Antiretroviral Therapy With a Simplified Dolutegravir Monotherapy in Patients With a Primary HIV-1 Infection

Long term toxicity of combination antiretroviral therapy (cART) is a substantial contributor to morbidity and mortality in chronically infected HIV positive individuals. To date it is still debated, whether long term nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors (NRTI's) -sparing regimens are practicable or even superior compared to standard of care cART in terms of efficacy, safety and tolerability. In addition, data about efficacy of integrase inhibitor (INSTI) based monotherapy is lacking. We aim at investigating the efficacy of standard of care combination antiretroviral therapy with a simplified dolutegravir monotherapy in patients with a primary HIV-1 infection under suppressive early standard of care antiretroviral therapy. Briefly, hundred-thirty-eight patients with a documented primary HIV1- infection (PHI) will be recruited from the Zurich Primary HIV-1 Infection Study (ZHPI), which is an open label, non-randomized, observational, single-center study (http://clinicaltrials.gov, ID 5 NCT00537966). All subjects formerly underwent early cART consisting of either a protease inhibitor (PI) or a non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitor (NNRTI) or a INSTI in combination with two NRTIs at the time point of enrolment in the ZPHI and must be under a fully suppressive ART (i.e., \<50 copies/ml) for at least 48 weeks at the time point of randomisation. The primary end point is the proportion of individuals with a viral failure at week 48 or before.