Research from a new study indicates that the AIDS drug Isentress (raltegravir) has significant benefits to patients who have received other treatments that were not successful. The drug doubles the likelihood that, despite being immune to other medications, AIDS infected patients will beat back the virus.
"We now have a drug that can bring many people back from a downward curve with no hope for resurrection of the immune system and no hope for control of the virus," said study author Dr. Roy Steigbigel, head of the HIV Center at Stony Brook University in a report published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
The drug appears to be successful on patients who have been inconsistent with their drug regime and thus developed resistance to medications, those that develop resistance in spite of strictly following the regime and those that are infected by a resistant strain of the virus.
Raltegravir has already been approved by the federal government as a "salvage therapy" based on early results of the study which was funded by the drug's manufacturer Merck & Co.
[Source: MedLinePlus]
We now have a drug that can bring many people back
Posted by: 花蓮 | January 11, 2009 2:59 AM | Permalink to Comment