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Tracy Hampton, PhD

JAMA. 2006;295:880.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases has stopped enrollment into a large international HIV/AIDS trial comparing continuous antiretroviral therapy with episodic drug treatment based on levels of CD4 cells.

Interim data from the trial, Strategies for Management of Anti-Retroviral Therapy, or SMART, revealed that patients receiving episodic therapy had twice the risk of disease progression, the major outcome of the study, as well as increases in major complications such as cardiovascular, kidney, and liver diseases.

In the trial, volunteers with HIV were randomly assigned to a viral suppression strategy, in which antiretroviral therapy was taken on an ongoing basis, or a drug conservation strategy, in which antiretroviral therapy was started only when the levels of CD4 cells dropped below 250/µL and was stopped whenever CD4 cells were above 350/µL (http://www.smart-trial.org). As of January 11, when enrollment was stopped, 5472 volunteers had joined the . . . [Full Text of this Article]

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