He has intermittent therapy for depression.
Another goal of intermittent therapy is to reduce the cost of the expensive medications.
Because less medication would be taken, the intermittent therapy presumably would reduce unwanted side-effects.
For those men, he said, intermittent therapy remained a reasonable option.
And even men with metastatic cancer might still opt for intermittent therapy to improve their quality of life, he said.
It has been thought from some earlier studies that such intermittent therapy was roughly as effective as continuous therapy.
Men with extensive disease lived six months longer with intermittent therapy, but that difference was not considered statistically meaningful.
Those getting intermittent therapy had a median survival of 5.2 years, compared with 7.1 years for those getting continuous therapy.
A drawback is that the tests to measure H.I.V. levels in the blood are now needed before individuals start the intermittent therapy, and the tests are not widely available in Africa.
Studies of the approach, structured intermittent therapy, in which patients are repeatedly given a break from their medications for a week or longer, has shown poor results, Dr. Bruce D. Walker of Harvard University said on Wednesday.
To Dr. Fauci, the greatest potential benefit of intermittent therapy would be in providing Africans an easier and more affordable way to take the drugs that are widely used in rich countries.
