ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, October 31, 1996 TAG: 9610310033
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A5 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
SOURCE: KNIGHT-RIDDER/TRIBUNE
The promising year for AIDS research may have just become better: Scientists on Wednesday announced cautious success in another approach to fight the deadly disease.
There is no talk of cures yet, but researchers say their attempts to boost the immune systems of infected patients seem to be working. The successes reported earlier this year were for treatments that attacked the AIDS virus.
``The two approaches are complementary,'' said Joseph Kovacs, a senior government AIDS researcher. ``This is a disease caused by a virus, so it's very important to inhibit the virus. But it's also a disease of the immune system, so it's important to keep in mind that inhibiting the virus can be complemented by boosting the immune system.''
Kovacs and his colleagues at the National Institutes of Health reported that giving AIDS patients a laboratory replica of a naturally occurring protein, called interleukin-2, or IL-2, was able to double and sustain critical infection-fighting immune system cells, called CD4 cells.
Essentially, this is like giving extra ammunition to the immune system to fight off diseases.
The central unanswered question that remains - something this study wasn't designed to address - is whether the increase in CD4 counts actually results in patients living longer or getting better.
The study also showed the treatment would not boost the AIDS virus while boosting the immune system, something scientists were worried about. And it underlined that successes were sustainable since the virus didn't develop resistance to the medicine - a common problem with AIDS drugs.
``The laboratory data gives us cause to be optimistic,'' said Anthony Fauci, the government's top AIDS researcher, who oversaw the researchers performing this study. ``But it would be premature to say it's a very important finding. It's a promising finding.''
Interleukin-2 will not be part of standard AIDS treatment until scientists complete more exhaustive trials, which can take up to three years.
In the one-year study, 60 patients were given either IL-2 and standard AIDS drugs or standard AIDS drugs alone. The research will be reported in today's issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.
The patients getting the new therapy saw their average CD4 count - the number of disease-fighting cells in every cubic millimeter of blood - rise from 428 to 916. The other patients saw their average CD4 count fall from 406 to 349.
The AIDS virus spreads by attacking CD4 cells. Normal CD4 counts in healthy individuals are 800 to 1,200 cells per cubic millimeter of blood. As patients get sicker, their CD4 cell counts get smaller. When that number plunges below 100, patients are extremely vulnerable to fatal diseases.
The anti-AIDS drugs used in the trial were an older type. Scientists believe that if the powerful new AIDS drugs that became available this year - called protease inhibitors - are used along with IL-2, the results may be even better, especially for recently infected patients.
Protease inhibitors have been so effective that doctors say AIDS need no longer be an automatic death sentence. Patients on these drugs have seen sudden drops in their virus levels. Many have climbed out of their sickbeds and begun planning the rest of their lives.
LENGTH: Medium: 65 linesby CNB