Mixed results on AZT's survival payoff.The antiviral drug antiviral drug, any of several drugs used to treat viral infections. The drugs act by interfering with a virus's ability to enter a host cell and replicate itself with the host cell's DNA. zidovudine zidovudine /zi·do·vu·dine/ (zi-do´vu-den) a synthetic nucleoside (thymidine) analogue that inhibits replication of some retroviruses, including the human immunodeficiency virus; used in the treatment of HIV infection and AIDS. (AZT AZT or zidovudine (zīdō`vy  dēn'), drug used to treat patients infected with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), which causes AIDS; also called ) can prolong the lives of AIDS patients if treatment begins before AIDS symptoms emerge, according to according toprep. 1. As stated or indicated by; on the authority of: according to historians. 2. In keeping with: according to instructions. 3. a retrospective study of men infected with the AIDS-causisng HIV HIV (Human Immunodeficiency Virus), either of two closely related retroviruses that invade T-helper lymphocytes and are responsible for AIDS. There are two types of HIV: HIV-1 and HIV-2. HIV-1 is responsible for the vast majority of AIDS in the United States. virus. But this new finding, reported in the April 16 New England Journal of Medicine The New England Journal of Medicine (New Engl J Med or NEJM) is an English-language peer-reviewed medical journal published by the Massachusetts Medical Society. It is one of the most popular and widely-read peer-reviewed general medical journals in the world. , runs counter to the results of a prospective study published earlier this year (SN: 2/15/92, p.100). The authors of the earlier study concluded that although early zidovudine treatment could delay the onset of AIDS symtoms, there was no evidence that such treatment could actually lengthen AIDS patients' lives. In the latest study, epidemiologist Neil M.H. Graham of Johns Hopkins University Johns Hopkins University, mainly at Baltimore, Md. Johns Hopkins in 1867 had a group of his associates incorporated as the trustees of a university and a hospital, endowing each with $3.5 million. Daniel C. in Baltimore and 34 colleagues analyzed the health records of 2,568 HIV-infected men who lived in Baltimore, Chicago, Pittsburgh, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. The men were participants in the Multicenter AIDS Cohort Study, which began in 1984. Graham's team found that men who received early zidovudine treatment were on-third less likely to die within two years than a second group of infected men who never took the drug or who took it only after developing AIDS symptoms. Those who took zidovudine early lived even longer if they also received the drug pentamidling to prevent pneumonia. "Our results support the hypothesis that treatment before the development of AIDS increases an HIV-infected person's survival time," says Graham. But John D. Hamilton, a principal author of the earlier report, contends that the new study is flawed. "Theirs is a comparison of early treatment versus essentially no treatment," he asserts. In that case, he says, "it is absolutely no surprise to show that early treatment is better." Hamilton, an infectious-disease specialist at the Veterans Administration Medical Center in Durham, N.C., adds that even though his group's study used a smaller sample -- 338 HIV-infected men -- it directly compared patients receiving early treatment with those who received zidovudine only after developing AIDS symptoms. He and his colleagues remain "quite confident that early AZT does not provide a survival benefit versus late AZT," he says. |
|
||||||||||||||||||
Printer friendly
Cite/link
Email
Feedback
Reader Opinion