How long does Genvoya stay in your system?

To eliminate the active antiviral agents in Genvoya (elvitegravir, emtricitabine and tenofovir alafenamide) from your system takes up to 70.95 hours.

Genvoya is a fixed-dose combination tablet used to treat human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-1 infection. It contains four different drugs: cobicistat, elvitegravir, emtricitabine and tenofovir alafenamide.

Elvitegravir, emtricitabine and tenofovir alafenamide are antiviral drugs, while cobicistat is included to increase blood levels of elvitegravir. Genvoya is taken once per day with food.

To work out how long a drug stays in your system researchers measure its half-life. This is the time it takes to eliminate half of the dose of a drug from your system. It is generally accepted that it takes 5.5 half-lives for a drug to be removed enough from the body that it is thought to have no clinical effect.

The half-life of the three antiviral medications in Genvoya are list in the table below.

^{*Tenofovir alafenamide is converted in the body to another active metabolite called tenofovir diphosphate, which has a half life of 150-180 hours in peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs).}