ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, February 25, 1997 TAG: 9702250109
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-6 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
SOURCE: Associated Press
TESTS found patients on the three-drug combination had only half the cancers, infections and deaths of the two-drug group.
AIDS patients live longer and have fewer infections with a three-drug combination that includes a new protease inhibitor drug, a federal health agency announced Monday.
The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases said that in a drug trial of AIDS patients with advanced disease, those taking a combination of zidovudine, lamivudine and indinavir had only half the cancers, infections and deaths of patients who were taking only a two-drug combination.
Dr. Scott Hammer of Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital at Harvard Medical School in Boston, the chairman of the national drug test, said all patients in the study are now being given the opportunity to switch to the three-drug combination or to other experimental regimens.
``We have moved very quickly on this,'' he said.
A committee determined last Tuesday that the three-drug combination was very beneficial and recommended the study stop so that all the patients in the drug trial could switch if they wanted to.
Hammer said that by last Friday letters had gone out to all of the centers and patients in the drug trials, notifying them of the findings and offering patients the chance to select a new drug combination.
He emphasized, however, that no patients should change their medication routine until they have consulted with their doctors.
Zidovudine is also known as AZT and lamivudine is known as 3TC. They are in a class of drugs known as reverse transcriptase inhibitors. The third drug, indinavir, is one of a new class of compounds called protease inhibitors. The two classes of drugs attack HIV, the AIDS virus, in different ways.
The drug trials, said Dr. Anthony Fauci, ``confirm the importance of including protease inhibitors in treatment strategies for patients with advanced HIV disease.''
LENGTH: Short : 45 linesby CNB