Health: AIDS Digest: News begins leaking out for AIDS conference

Health: AIDS Digest: News begins leaking out for AIDS conference

The Washington Blade - February 2, 2001

The annual AIDS retrovirus conference begins in Chicago this weekend and, thus, the annual pre-conference news leaks began in earnest last week. Hoffman-LaRoche and Trimeris pharmaceuticals announced Monday that they have more good data showing their fusion inhibitors are both effective and safe. One drug, T-20, was given to 71 patients who had previously taken a standard protease inhibitor-nucleoside analog combination. In this study, they were given T-20 twice daily along with four other drugs - two protease inhibitors, one nucleoside, and one non-nucleoside analog. Hoffman-LaRoche and Trimeris said the patients getting the T-20 did markedly better than patients who took the other four drugs but no T-20. A second fusion inhibitor, T-1249 appeared to be well tolerated in its early safety study.

Meanwhile, Reuters reported Monday that Trimeris hopes to have FDA approval to market T-20 by next year and expects it will cost more than other HIV drugs already on the market.

There's more good news coming out on efavirenz, too. According to a report in the Feb. 1 issue of the Journal of Infectious Diseases, the non-nucleoside analog (marketed as Sustiva) taken in combination with the protease inhibitor indinavir can significantly reduce the viral loads of patients who have already been on nucleoside analogs.

The bad news is likely to come in the area of "strategic treatment interruption," a strategy touted during the past year as a possible way of helping patients manage complex pill-taking regimens and avoiding drug side effects. A recent issue of the journal AIDS reported researchers from Germany found that patients' viral loads rebounded significantly under such a strategy.

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