Stefaan,
Haven't followed VLGC much; anything catch your eye?
>>SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. and CHICAGO, Dec. 18 /PRNewswire/ -- ViroLogic, Inc. (Nasdaq: VLGC - news) announced today that the first national assessment of HIV drug resistance has revealed that 78 percent of HIV patients with measurable levels of virus in their blood are infected with an HIV strain that is resistant to one or more AIDS drugs.
The study, which used ViroLogic's rapid, direct and sensitive drug resistance test, PhenoSense(TM) HIV, will be presented as a latebreaker abstract today at the 41st Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy (ICAAC). HIV drug resistance is the leading cause of HIV treatment failure and the data presented here indicate that the problem is considerably larger than previously believed.
``This is the first comprehensive study to show just how prevalent drug resistance has become in the U.S., and underscores the need for physicians and patients to understand both the magnitude of the resistance problem and the therapeutic approaches available to address it,'' said Douglas Richman, M.D., Professor of Pathology and Medicine, University of California, San Diego and Chief, Virology Section and Director, Research Center for AIDS and HIV Infection, VA San Diego Healthcare System, who presented the study today. ``Drug resistance testing should become a standard part of care. Physicians can use the valuable information provided by drug resistance testing to decide if and when treatment interventions are appropriate and to help patients avoid treatment failure.''
``ViroLogic, along with our distribution partners, will use this important data to continue to educate our customers about the vital need for drug resistance testing, and expect it to help fuel the continued growth of our business,'' said Bill Young, ViroLogic's Chairman and CEO.
Researchers led by Dr. Richman used PhenoSense HIV to measure drug resistance among participants in the HIV Cost and Service Utilization Study (HCSUS), a longitudinal study representing the 209,000 HIV-infected adults in the United States who were receiving medical care in 1996 and were alive at the end of 1998 or early 1999. This survey was conducted more than two years after highly active antiretroviral therapies (HAART) were introduced as standard treatment regimens, indicating that widespread resistance occurred frequently despite the use of potent new classes of HIV drugs.
The study found HIV drug resistance to nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors (NRTI's) in 70 percent of tested patients, to non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors (NNRTI's) in 31 percent of patients, and to protease inhibitors (PI's) in 42 percent of patients. Resistance was not limited to those who have been heavily treated. While HIV in 87 percent of subjects taking antiretroviral therapy exhibited some drug resistance, virus in 41 percent of patients not receiving therapy also showed signs of drug resistance. Thus, drug resistant virus may exist in patients who have not started therapy or who have discontinued prior therapy. This finding may have significant implications not only for previously treated patients, but also for newly infected individuals, who increasingly are infected with drug resistant strains of the virus.
``The bad news here is that HIV is a highly adaptable virus that can outsmart the drugs we now have available,'' said Dr. Richman. ``The good news is that there are approaches physicians and patients can employ to limit the impact of resistance and maintain viral suppression.''
Conference Call Details
The Company will hold a conference call today to discuss the latebreaker, ``The Prevalence of Antiretroviral Drug Resistance in the U.S.,'' at 12:00 pm Eastern time. The call will be hosted by Bill Young and Dr. Richman. To participate, please dial 800-360-9865 ten minutes prior to the start of the call. To listen to a live webcast of the call visit virologic.com.<<
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Cheers, Tuck |
