Preventing AIDS pneumonia.Daily doses of the sulfa drug trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole (TMP/SMX) help AIDS patients fend off recurrences of a life-threatening form of pneumonia more effectively than do monthly treatments with aerosolized pentamidine pentamidine /pen·tam·i·dine/ (pen-tam´i-den) an antiinfective used as the isethionate salt in the treatment of pneumonia, leishmaniasis, and early African trypanosomiasis. , according to a pair of studies comparing the two widely used preventive medications. However, the authors of the studies conclude that because it produces fewer side effects than TMP/SMX, aerosolized pentamidine may still prove preferable for protecting some AIDS patients from Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia (PCP) A lung infection that affects people with weakened immune systems, such as people with AIDS or people taking medicines that weaken the immune system. Mentioned in: AIDS, Antiprotozoal Drugs, Sulfonamides . This form of pneumonia strikes many people with AIDS The People With AIDS (PWA) Self-Empowerment Movement was a movement of those diagnosed with AIDS and grew out of San Francisco. The PWA Self-Empowerment Movement believes that those diagnosed as having AIDS should "take charge of their own life, illness, and care, and to minimize , and kills a large number of them. In the mid-1980s, physicians began prescribing pentamidine or TMP/SMX -- both of which are also used to treat established cases of Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia -- for AIDS patients as a preventive measure. Without such therapy, 65 percent of patients taking the anti-AIDS drug zidovudine (AZT) who survive an initial episode of the pneumonia suffer further bouts. In the first study, researchers led by Robert S. Holzman of New York University New York University, mainly in New York City; coeducational; chartered 1831, opened 1832 as the Univ. of the City of New York, renamed 1896. It comprises 13 schools and colleges, maintaining 4 main centers (including the Medical Center) in the city, as well as the School of Medicine in New York City and W. David Hardy of the University of California, Los Angeles UCLA comprises the College of Letters and Science (the primary undergraduate college), seven professional schools, and five professional Health Science schools. Since 2001, UCLA has enrolled over 33,000 total students, and that number is steadily rising. , found that 150 AIDS patients who inhaled an aerosol form of pentamidine once a month ran more than three times the risk of developing a recurrence of Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia as the same number of patients taking daily TMP/SMX. However, the researchers report in the Dec. 24 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. , roughly one-fourth of the TMP/SMX patients had to stop taking the drug because it caused severe weakness or abdominal pain. Researchers led by Margrit M.E. Schneider of the University Hospital Utrecht in the Netherlands report similar results in another study in the same journal. Schneider's team found that none of 142 AIDS patients taking daily TMP/SMX developed Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia, while six of 71 AIDS patients receiving pentamidine treatments monthly fell ill. |
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