Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 1995. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 1995. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
Reuters NewMedia, Inc. - 20 Dec 1995
Two studies to be reported in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine examined laboratory indicators of the diseases, which showed hopeful results from treatment with the new drug, lamivudine.
But the tests did not assess whether the drug actually keeps sufferers healthier longer.
Lamivudine is made under the brand name Epivir by Glaxo Wellcome Plc, which helped pay for both experiments. Neither found any serious side effects caused by the drug.
The hepatitis study, led by Dr. Jules Dienstag of Massachusetts General Hospital, involved 32 long-time sufferers of hepatitis B, the blood-borne version of hepatitis that affects the liver and eventually kills five to 20 percent of its victims.
The volunteers who got the highest dose were most likely to have all traces of hepatitis DNA disappear from the blood, a sign that the medicine was interfering with the virus' ability to reproduce in the body.
But when the medicine was stopped after 12 weeks, hepatitis DNA reappeared in most patients. Six of the 32 were an exception. Hepatitis DNA did not reappear immediately.
Dienstag and his colleagues said the patients who were mostly likely to benefit from the drug were those whose hepatitis DNA levels were low to begin with.
Lamivudine worked even in patients for whom another therapy, treatment with interferon, had failed.
In the tests on people infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, a group led by Dr. Joseph Eron of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill assessed the number of white blood cells known as CD4+ cells, which declines as the immune system is destroyed. They also directly measured the HIV virus in the blood.
The researchers found that lamivudine increased the number of CD4+ cells after one year. It worked best when combined with the well-established anti-AIDS drug AZT.
AZT, also known as zidovudine, is sold by Glaxo under the brand name Retrovir.
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