The Washington Blade - February 2, 2001
Lisa Keen

ANTI-PAIN PATCH: The Jan. 1 issue of the Journal of Pain Management reports many patients with advanced AIDS and chronic pain have experienced improved pain management using skin patches of fetanyl. Fetanyl works by diminishing the brain's capacity to feel the pain but, like morphine, it can be addictive.

WASTING DRUG COUNTERFEIT: The Food and Drug Administration issued a warning last week that someone has been able to slip into the legitimate market a fake version of a drug approved for the treatment of AIDS wasting. The Serono company makes the real drug, Serostim, and reports that the fake version has been discovered in at least six states now, including New Jersey, Ohio, Kentucky, Michigan, Florida and Missouri. The Boston Globe reported yesterday that some believe the perpetrator is replacing the real thing with the fake and then selling the real drug on the black market. One way to distinguish the fake drug is that it has an expiration date of 08/02 instead of 08/01 or 06/02. For more details on how to distinguish the fake from the real, see www.fda.gov/medwatch/safety/2001/serostim.

NON-NUKE ON RESTRICTION: The Pfizer company announced last week that it was restricting distribution of its non-nucleoside analog capravirine because the new drug appears to cause inflammation of blood vessels. The FDA has agreed to let about 650 patients who are doing well on the drug ù after having failed on other drugs ù to continue taking capravirine. Just last month, researchers in France reported "some degree of coronary and arterial" vascular disease in HIV-infected patients.

NINE-DRUG REGIMEN? A Canadian group led by respected researcher Julio Montaner reports in the Jan. 5 issue of the journal AIDS that salvage regimens involving as many as five to nine drugs have shown some effectiveness in combating the viral loads of patients failing on their current regimens. Most patients were given a five-drug regimen of two protease inhibitors and three nucleoside analogs. Not surprisingly, however, side effects were a problem. More than a third experienced nausea and abdominal pain and almost two-thirds saw changes in their liver functioning.

DROPPING PCP PREVENTION: Two new studies out last month confirmed that it is safe for people with HIV to discontinue taking medication to prevent pneumocystis carinii pneumonia once their CD4 counts rise back above 200. In one of the latest studies, published in the Jan. 18 New England Journal of Medicine, not one case of PCP had been recorded among 240 patients who had discontinued the therapy for two years.

GOAT SERUM ALARM: The FDA announced last month that a batch of contaminated experimental HIV treatment derived from goat's blood was stolen from a laboratory in North Carolina. The substance is considered "extremely dangerous" and the FDA strongly urges patients not attempt to use it as a treatment.

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