Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, August 21, 1995 TAG: 9508210122
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: BOSTON LENGTH: Medium
However, a second study of more than 1,600 volunteers infected with HIV found that treatment with AZT before the onset of full-blown AIDS does not fend off the disease.
During the last several years, experts have debated just how useful it is.
The latest studies, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, add to the evidence.
A study conducted on 77 patients found that AZT treatment reduced the frequency of minor infections 15 months after treatment.
The researchers, headed by Sabine Kinloch-de Loes of the Geneva University Hospital in Switzerland, concluded that AZT should be considered when treating patients with primary HIV infections.
In an accompanying editorial, Dr. David D. Ho discussed the need to treat HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, early and aggressively.
Studies have shown that newly infected people harbor a relatively homogeneous population of the virus, in contrast to the diverse ``swarm'' of viruses found in people who have been infected longer. Also, the virus replicates and mutates rapidly.
Ho, a New York University AIDS researcher, said given those facts, single-drug therapy is ``doomed to fail.''
Ho noted that aggressive combination chemotherapy, not monotherapy, is what led to cures for childhood leukemia and tuberculosis.
``Optimistically, we can hope that such an approach will become possible in patients infected with HIV-1,'' he wrote.
``To stack the deck in favor of success, we should exert maximal antiviral pressure ... on the virus when it is most homogeneous - during the initial phase of infection.''
In the other study, researchers at San Francisco General Hospital and the AIDS Clinical Trials Group wrote that the drug, also known as zidovudine, does not significantly prolong either AIDS-free symptoms or survival.
The study, headed by Dr. Paul Volberding, found almost no difference in the death rate between patients given AZT when they did not have symptoms and their white blood cell count was greater than 500 per cubic millimeter, and volunteers who took the drug after their white blood cell count dropped below 500.
by CNB