Antiretrovirals and your kidneys

Despite having been linked to the kidneys, tenofovir (Vireadand also in the combination pill Truvada) appears not to cause more problems than other NRTI [1]A type of anti-HIV drug that works by inhibiting a stage of the HIV life cycle called reverse transcription. Non-nucleosides work in a similar way, but are chemically different. drugs, US investigators have reported.

They found that there is often a modest decline in kidney function when either tenofovir or an alterative drug is used as part of initial therapy, but that this soon stabilises. However, their research does show that taking tenofovir in combination with a ritonavir­boosted protease inhibitor may have an adverse effect on the health of your kidneys.

Generally, kidney function improves once you start taking HIV treatment but declines are sometimes observed in people taking antiretroviral [2]A medication or other substance which is active against retroviruses such as HIV. therapy if their viral load [3]A measurement of the quantity of HIV RNA in the blood. Viral load blood test results are expressed as the number of copies (of HIV) per milliliter of blood plasma. is not fully suppressed.
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