Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 1998. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
San Francisco Chronicle; Monday, June 29, 1998
David Perlman, Chronicle Science Editor
The study was led by Dr. Roy M. Gulick, now at Cornell University, and involved nearly 100 HIVinfected patients who were prescribed Crixivan, one of the newer class of powerful drugs called protease inhibitors, together with AZT and another widely used anti- viral called 3TC, trade-named Lamivudine.
Since the new drug "cocktails" first burst into hopeful prominence two years ago at the Vancouver AIDS conference, many patients have taken the drugs sequentially -- starting with one and then moving to the others in order.
In their study, Gulick and his colleagues found that nearly 80 percent of the patients who began treatment by taking all three of their drugs simultaneously saw their levels of HIV drop quickly to undetectable levels in their blood and remain undetectable for two full years -- the longest sustained response on record, Gulick said.
At the same time, the numbers of their immune system's white blood cells known as CD4 cells, which help direct the body's ability to fight off disease, continued increasing for the two years of the experiment, Gulick said.
The effect was so striking, Gulick said, that after 24 weeks, other groups of volunteer patients who had been randomly assigned to begin therapy with only one drug at a time were allowed to switch to the simultaneous regime. The simultaneous drug therapy, Gulick said, minimizes chances that drug resistance will emerge, and the researchers have detected no signs of resistance to any of the drugs during the two years since the continuing experiment began.
The Gulick team, however, did not investigate in detail some major side effects that are beginning to afflict thousands who have been taking the protease inhibitor combinations.
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