Supplements and Tenofovir alafenamide.
Tenofovir alafenamide, sold under the brand name Vemlidy, is a nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitor (NRTI): it terminates the growing viral DNA chain. NRTIs are cleared renally or by glucuronidation rather than by cytochrome P450.
Tenofovir alafenamide is a nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitor (NRTI). The class terminates the growing viral DNA chain and forms the backbone that an integrase inhibitor or an NNRTI is built on, so almost nobody takes one on its own. ⚠️ The supplement rules for this class are inherited rather than intrinsic, and it is worth being precise about why. Unlike the protease inhibitors and the NNRTIs, NRTIs are not cleared by cytochrome P450 at all: tenofovir disoproxil, emtricitabine and lamivudine are eliminated renally, largely unchanged, and abacavir goes through alcohol dehydrogenase and glucuronidation. A supplement that inhibits or induces CYP3A4 therefore has no route to the NRTI itself. What it does have a route to is the partner drug sitting in the same tablet or the same regimen, and that partner is what the exclusions protect. So curcumin, quercetin, resveratrol, schisandra, berberine, boswellia, bergamot and St John's Wort are excluded here on the strength of the regimen rather than of this molecule. The one genuine class-level signal is tenofovir alafenamide, which is a P-glycoprotein substrate, and St John's Wort lowers it by inducing P-glycoprotein rather than CYP3A4. Immune-active herbs (echinacea, andrographis, elderberry, cordyceps, astragalus) are excluded as a precaution on antiretroviral therapy regardless of CD4 count. The HIV team signs off any new supplement rather than community pharmacy.
We have not yet completed an explicit assessment of supplement interactions with Tenofovir alafenamide in the Distil database. That is different from saying nothing exists. We surface this distinction deliberately: the Distil checker tells you when we have explicitly assessed a pair and when we have not, because both are useful information. If you take Tenofovir alafenamide alongside a supplement, the checker below will surface anything already in our database, and the missing-item form at the bottom of the page routes uncatalogued pairs into our next curation pass.
What this list does not say. Pairs not flagged here are not implicitly safe. They are either not yet in our database, or fall outside our inclusion scope (food-supplement interactions only; for drug-drug interactions, the BNF is authoritative). Use the checker below to surface any supplement, and submit a missing item if you take something we have not catalogued.
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How we grade severity, choose what's in scope, and what we exclude.
Every call on this page is reasoned. We publish the full rubric for severity tiers, the medication inclusion logic, the evidence grades we accept, and what we deliberately leave out. About three thousand words. Worth reading once if you use this tool more than occasionally.
Read the full methodologyA full supplement review, built around you, not a generic stack.
The free checker answers one interaction question at a time. A Distil report reviews the bigger picture: your goals, diet, medications, current supplements and any blood results you provide, then shows what appears worth keeping, changing, adding or leaving out.
- what your diet already covers, so you are not adding a capsule for something food is already handling
- which evidence-graded compounds are worth considering for your goals, and which were considered but left out
- what to keep, change or stop from what you already take, plus the order to introduce anything new
- how your medications and complete supplement stack fit together, with daily timing and a clear point for reassessment
The interaction check is one section of the full report. You also get the reasoning behind each recommendation and the evidence references used.
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