MEDICAL UPDATE: An Introduction to Immune-Based Therapy

MEDICAL UPDATE: An Introduction to Immune-Based Therapy

Being Alive Newsletter, Being Alive/Los Angeles - July 1992
Dr. Robert Schooley and reported by Walt Senterfitt

Dr. Schooley is a leading AIDS academic researcher as well as treating physician, and is chair of the Immune Based Therapy Working Group of the national AIDS Clinical Trials Group (ACTG). His presentation to the LA Physicians AIDS Forum is a good introduction to immune-based therapies, though not intended to be comprehensive. A somewhat different perspective is offered in a related article on page 12 by Stephan Korsia, the Coordinator of Treatment Education Programs at APLA.

Immune-based therapy for HIV infection is an area that has generated a lot of controversy. In the early phases of the AIDS epidemic, much discussion of potentially effective treatments centered on trying to stimulate the immune response, given this is an immunologic disease. Later on, as early immunologic therapies were disappointing and drugs like AZT showed promise, most efforts to develop therapies were directed at the etiologic agent, HIV. Immune based therapies may now be returning to prominence, depending on what results we see from laboratory studies and clinical trials over the next 12 to 18 months.
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