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Technology Stocks : FBN Associates: A Perfect Company -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jeffrey S. Mitchell who wrote (1889)	8/6/1998 2:59:00 PM
From: BARRY ALLEN	Respond to of 2117

Hey shorty....don't you and your buddy, s martin, have anything else to do but bash the pennies? JAMA and Glaxo Welcome Inc. are paying attention to your "scam" plot! Reticulose offers promising, inexpensive treatment for HIV ATLANTA, May 25 (Reuters) - A drug used to treat viral infections half a century ago has shown promising results in new trials of patients with HIV infections. The drug is Reticulose, a peptide nucleic acid which acts as an immune modulator by stimulating the production of cytokines. Reticulose (manufactured by Advanced Viral Research Corp., Yonkers, NY) has been off the market in the United States since the 1960s when a change in composition made it ineligible for the Food and Drug Administration's GRAS (generally regarded as safe) list, Dr. Shalom Hirschman, formerly of Mt. Sinai School of Medicine, New York, told the annual gathering of the American Society of Microbiology here. In the double-blind, placebo-controlled trial of 43 men and women with HIV or AIDS on Barbados, patients in the active treatment group received 1 mL of Reticulose twice a day subcutaneously for two weeks, then 1 mL a day every other week for a total of 60 days. None of the patients had received any antiretroviral therapy before entering the study. Patients who received Reticulose had a decrease in viral load of about a half log, Dr. Hirschman said. CD4 cell counts increased in the active treatment group from a baseline of 232 to 354/æL. In the placebo group, CD4 cell counts fell from 215/æL at baseline to 201/æL at the end of the 60-day trial. Patients on active treatment also had increases in weight gain, fewer opportunistic infections, and lower mortality than patients on placebo. The study was unblinded after 120 days. Three patients in the placebo group died, and one patient in the treatment group had progressed to AIDS. Patients who have remained in the trial have been on treatment for 21 months now. Although treatment with Reticulose was offered to patients in the placebo group, Dr. Hirschman said few accepted due to a disaffinity in the culture for needlesticks. Dr. Paul Levett of the University of the West Indies and Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Bridgetown, Barbados, said Reticiulose does not directly attack HIV, but stimulates the action of immunomodulators, especially interleukin-1, interleukin-6, interferon-gamma, and tumor necrosis factor-alpha. Dr. Hirschman noted that Reticulose has great potential for use in developing countries because the yearly cost of the drug is about $4,000, compared with $14,000 or more for treatment with multidrug regimens that include protease inhibitors. He said the data compiled in the study in Barbados and ongoing trials in Argentina and Mexico City should be sufficient for the company to seek a New Drug Application from the FDA. "We are dedicated to developing Reticulose as an affordable, non-toxic treatment for patients with AIDS and other viral infections worldwide," Dr. Hirschman said. The only side effect associated with Reticulose is soreness at the injection site and a burning sensation when the drug is injected, he said. c 1998 Reuters Health Information. All rights reserved. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This site produced by the Journal of the American Medical Association with support from Glaxo Wellcome Inc. c 1998 American Medical Association. All rights reserved.