TRIAL HALTED ON DRUG MEANT TO TREAT AIDS-RELATED EYE INFECTION.

Byline: Jacqueline Stenson and Suzanne Zolfom Knight-Ridder Tribune News Wire

A federally sponsored clinical trial designed to study the safety and effectiveness of the drug MSL 109 (Protovir) for the treatment of a blinding eye infection in people with AIDS has been stopped after researchers concluded that the drug was not helping.

Just more than 200 of the 325 patients planned for the study had been treated with either MSL 109 or a placebo at the time the study was stopped, according to the National Eye Institute in Bethesda, Md., which this week announced the trial's discontinuation.

The drug was being tested to combat CMV retinitis. AIDS patients with the eye condition who were treated with the drug had a recurrence of the eye condition in 65 days, compared with 66 days for those taking a placebo, according to the NEI.

Up to 40 percent of people with AIDS develop CMV retinitis, a condition caused by the cytomegalovirus, according to the group. If untreated, the disease destroys the retina and can lead to blindness. People with AIDS are vulnerable to CMV retinitis because their immune systems are weakened.

Pregnancy and contacts: Changes in the eyes during pregnancy make disposable contact lenses a good choice for mothers-to-be, according to two eye experts.

Because disposable contacts are inexpensive and are worn only for short periods of time - a day, a few days or a week - and then discarded, if a woman's prescription changes, she can get her new contacts quickly and at a lower cost than regular lenses, according to Mark Sawamura and Judy Tong, optometrists at the Southern California College of Optometry in Fullerton.

Hormonal changes, water retention and dry eyes can cause slight changes in vision and make it difficult for women to wear contact lenses throughout pregnancy, they said.

Some pregnant women must limit the number of hours a day they wear contacts, whereas other women cannot wear them at all during pregnancy, they added.

Nearsightedness linked to studying: If you do a lot of reading and other ``nearwork,'' your chances of developing nearsightedness appear to increase, researchers report.

A group of medical students - a population known to have a higher incidence of nearsightedness than others - had their degree of nearsightedness measured twice in five years, according to researchers led by Dr. Yung-Feng Shih, of the National Taiwan University Hospital in Taipei.

At the time of the first measurement, 92.8 percent of the students were nearsighted. But at the end of the study, 95.8 percent of them were, including 21 new cases, the researchers reported in the July issue of Optometry and Vision Science.