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Combination of treatments giving AIDS patients hope
October 9, 1996
Web posted at: 11:50 p.m. EDTFrom Medical Correspondent Jeff Levine
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The first line of attack against the AIDS virus is not just one drug, studies show, but a combination of treatments.
Many patients say the medicines are making a big differences in their battle against the deadly disease.
"I'm just so happy that, having been through such a roller coaster with this disease, it thrills me that the outlook is so sunny at this point," said AIDS patient Andy Waddell.
Waddell's doctor, Bruce Rashbaum, believes in combination therapy, for personal and professional reasons. They've helped him fight off the AIDS virus and keep on practicing medicine.
"With the advent of the newer drugs, which I started when they came out, I felt wonderful again," Rashbaum said.
Without new combinations of drugs, Rashbaum might have quit his job. "Emotionally it was very hard, I've lost almost 600 patients."
Enthusiasm for combination therapy is validated by three studies in the New England Journal of Medicine.
The largest included about 2,500 patients who were followed for about three years.
Combinations of two drugs were compared to a single medicine.
The combo strategy lowered the death and complication rate by up to 50 percent, compared with AZT alone.
The studies show that combinations are able to knock down the virus before it becomes resistant to treatment.
But combinations are not a cure, and there are still many questions to be answered.
At what point do you start therapy? How long to you give therapy? What's the right combination of drugs to start with. What happens when those drugs fail?
In general, researchers now think, there's no reason to hold back.
As encouraging as these studies are, they did not include the new AIDS drugs, protease inhibitors. Now the are giving these drug combinations an even stronger punch.
Related stories:
- Could herpes link solve AIDS riddle? - August 12, 1996
- Study: Gene mutation can be shield against HIV infection - August 9, 1996
- AIDS researchers hold out hope for cure - July 12, 1996
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