Dolutegravir-Based Antiretroviral Regimens for HIV Liver Transplant Patients in Real-Life Settings

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Liver transplantation is now considered a safe procedure in patients with HIV because of the advent of potent antiretroviral therapies (ART). OBJECTIVE: We aimed to describe the use of dolutegravir-based maintenance ART in patients with HIV and liver transplant regularly followed in our hospital. METHODS: We searched the database of our Department of Infectious Diseases for liver transplant recipients receiving calcineurin inhibitor-based maintenance immunosuppression concomitantly treated with dolutegravir for at least 1 month. RESULTS: Ten HIV-positive liver transplant recipients were identified. At 4.6 ± 3.5 years post-transplant, all the patients were switched to dolutegravir-based therapies for treatment simplification. However, at 1 year after the switch, five of the ten patients returned to their previous ART regimens because of increased serum transaminases (n = 1), reversible increased serum creatinine (n = 4), repeated episodes of nausea/vomiting (n = 1) and variable out-of-range concentrations of tacrolimus or cyclosporine (n = 2). However, it should be recognized that these events cannot be unequivocally ascribed to dolutegravir and, in the case of increased serum creatinine, are predictable. CONCLUSIONS: The management of HIV-positive liver transplant recipients in clinical practice is a complex task, where possibility of simplifying antiretroviral regimens must be balanced with the need to guarantee optimal immunosuppression and the finest treatment tolerability. A multidisciplinary approach involving physicians and clinical pharmacologists/pharmacists could help achieve this goal.