Tuesday July 23 3:49 PM EDT
Big AIDS Study Stopped; All Given ``Cocktail''
LONDON (Reuter) - Drug companies said Tuesday trials of a ``cocktail'' of AIDS drugs had been so successful
they were giving one of the drugs, 3TC, to everyone in the trial.
Glaxo Wellcome Plc said a combination of 3TC (Epivir) along with the standard HIV drug AZT, and sometimes
with other drugs, caused a 54 percent drop in progression to AIDS or death.
An independent group of scientists set up by Glaxo, which licenses Epivir from the Canadian company BioChem
Pharma Inc, recommended the move 16 months after the study started in March 1995. It was due to end in March
1997 but has now been stopped.
Glaxo said halting the trial would allow all the nearly 2,000 participants to benefit. Under the experiment, some were
given the drug and others were not.
``Expectations for Epivir have been gradually rising as the idea of using it as one of the mainstays of these cocktails
has become conventional wisdom,'' said SG Strauss Turnbull pharmaceuticals analyst Paul Diggle.
``Some of the results of these sort of combinations are looking little short of spectacular and today's news is
reinforcing in people's minds that the AIDS market is changing and that Glaxo is in an extremely strong position to
be the biggest beneficiary of it,'' he said.
The study, known as Caesar, included 1,892 HIV patients from Canada, Australia, Europe and South Africa.
Cocktail therapy is the new hero of the fight against AIDS. Scientists reported at an international conference on
AIDS in Vancouver earlier this month that combinations of three or more drugs could wipe out all evidence of the
HIV virus.
Although they cannot tell how long the effects will last -- and AIDS can take more than a decade to develop -- they
hope the combination therapies offer the first clues to a cure.
Nick Partridge of British AIDS charity the Terrence Higgins Trust welcomed the findings with some reservations.
``Overall, this confirms the benefits of combination therapy,'' he said.
``However, what we don't know from this initial analysis is the impact of resistance and the development of
resistance. One of the strong themes that came out of Vancouver is that just adding one drug to a combination is not
necessarily the best way to maximise the impact of three-drug therapy.''
He added: ``This trial raises as many questions as it answers. It does not provide any clear, definitive answers as to
what combinations people with HIV should take.''
The cocktail successes have been the first good news in the 15-year battle against the AIDS pandemic which has
killed nearly six million people. |
