Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 1997. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
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United Press International; Monday, September 29, 1997 - 9:53 PM EDT
Ed Susman, UPI Science News
In a late addition to an infectious disease meeting in Toronto sponsored by the American Society for Microbiology, doctors say after more than a year of therapy, 90 percent of patients had no detectable virus in their blood, and 12 of 13 patients who agreed to undergo spinal puncture had no sign of the virus there, either.
In previous studies, researchers have shown it is also possible to reduce virus to undetectable levels in the lymph system. However, doctors say the virus may still be residing in areas of the brain and reproductive system _ sites which haven't been studied yet for signs that the virus has been eradicated.
Dr. Charles Farthing, director of the AIDS program for the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, West Hollywood, Calif., reports that 109 of 141 patients have completed 60 weeks of the trail in which different doses of two protease inhibitors, ritonavir and saquinavir, were administered to the patients.
Farthing says these two protease inhibitors were used because it takes a different mutation in the virus to disable each of the drugs, theoretically making it more difficult for the virus to resist therapy.
The one person for whom detectable virus was found in the spinal fluid also had detectable virus in his blood. To reach undetectable levels, fewer than 400 copies of the virus in a milliliter of fluid must be available.
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