Good news for children and adults who cannot swallow Prezista (darunavir) tablets: A liquid version of the drug was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on December 16. According to an announcement from the agency, the drug’s package insert has also been updated to provide dosing information for children as young as 3 years old.

Like most antiretroviral dosing schedules for children, pediatric Prezista dosing—whether using the new liquid formulation or tablets—is based on weight and treatment history. 

Adults who have difficulty swallowing Prezista tablets may also use the new liquid formulation. Treatment-naive adults and treatment-experienced adults with no evidence of HIV resistance to Prezista can take 8 milliliters (ml) of liquid Prezista with 1.25 ml of Norvir (ritonavir) once daily with food. The 8 ml dose should be taken as two 4 ml administrations with the included oral dosing syringe.

For treatment-experienced adults with HIV harboring at least one Prezista resistance mutation, the liquid Prezista dose is 6 ml with 1.25 ml Norvir, both taken twice daily with food.

The newly approved oral formulation contains 100 milligrams (mg) of active drug per milliliter of liquid.