Newsday - April 28, 1992
Laurie Garrett
There is no indication that an African drug, Kemron, is effective against the AIDS virus, the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases said yesterday.
A Kenyan research team claimed in July, 1990, that Kemron could completely reverse symptoms of AIDS, eliminating laboratory signs of infection in at least 10 percent of those who use the drug. Kenyan President Daniel arap Moi said on July 27, 1990, that "Fifty-eight victims have already been cured."
The finding was widely hailed in the African-American community in the United States, and various forms of alpha-interferon, the basis of Kemron, have sold widely in the United States through AIDS buyers clubs for unapproved medications.
But the NIAID's AIDS Research Advisory Committee, after reviewing the 13 clinical studies available of Kemron, concluded the studies "do not support an earlier report that Kemron is an effective therapy." None of the studies was conducted by NIAID.
Health and Human Services Secretary Louis Sullivan applauded the NIAID study, urging AIDS patients to seek other "therapies whose effacacies have been established in well-designed, controlled clinical trials."
But Dr. Barbara Justice of Harlem Hospital, who has used Kemron and a similar drug, IMMUNEX, on "over 200 patients," said in an interview yesterday that most patients, particularly those in very early stages of infection with the human immunodeficiency virus, benefit from the drug.
"Let's look at this," Justice said, insisting that NIAID should sponsor a serious clinical trial with the drug, rather than dismiss it on the basis of studies conducted largely in Africa. "It's not a cure, it's not a miracle, but it's also not snake oil. Let's take the time to look at this right. The patients deserve it."
Controversy has surrounded every aspect of Kemron since the July, 1990, news conference in Nairobi. The drug is made from nine types of human alpha-interferon - a protein naturally produced in human bodies - and given orally to patients in doses 1 million-fold less than those traditionally injected into people with cancer or AIDS in the United States. Many scientists have dismissed Kemron off-hand because the interferon dose is negligible - less than would normally be found in a drop of human blood.
One small American study of a Kemron-like alpha-interferon treatment manufactured by Interferon Sciences in New Jersey played a pivotal role in the NIAID's negative evaluation of the drug. Dr. Joseph Hassett of Mount Sinai Medical Center in Manhattan gave oral alpha-interferon in doses similar to those used in Kenya to 38 patients over the last two years. None of the patients saw their infections reverse, Hassett said, or their immune system cell counts increase. Both activities were claimed by Kemron inventor Dr. Davey Koech of the Kenya Medical Research Institute in Nairobi.
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