Resistance mutations to zidovudine and saquinavir in patients receiving zidovudine plus saquinavir or zidovudine and zalcitabine plus saquinavir in AIDS Clinical Trials Group 229

The relationships among treatment regimens, plasma human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) RNA levels, and resistance mutations to saquinavir (codons 48 and 90) and zidovudine (codon 215) were examined in a cohort of 144 patients from the AIDS Clinical Trials Group 229 study. After 24-40 weeks of therapy, no patients who had received the two-drug combination (zidovudine plus saquinavir) had only codon 48 mutations, 45.8% had only codon 90 mutations, and 8.3% had both codon 48 and 90 mutations. Mutations developed by patients who had received the three-drug combination (zidovudine and zalcitabine plus saquinavir) were codon 48 alone in 1.4%, codon 90 alone in 33.3%, and both codons 48 and 90 in 4.2%, The difference between the groups showed a trend toward reduced mutations with three versus two drugs but did not reach significance (P = .11, two-sided chi(2)) Higher baseline HIV RNA levels correlated with the development of protease mutations. Mutations at codon 215 were present in 82% of all patients at baseline and in 87% after therapy.