HIV patient Steven Gendin abandoned the 'kitchen sink' therapy because it made him too ill

February 3, 1999
Web posted at: 8:00 p.m. EST (0100 GMT)

From Medical Correspondent Elizabeth Cohen

CHICAGO (CNN) -- Cocktails of new, powerful AIDS drugs have proven a lifesaver for many people living with HIV. But when the usual combinations of two or three drugs no longer work, doctors are turning to what's been dubbed "kitchen sink" therapy, in which as many as eight drugs are used simultaneously.

"When you kind of run out of the standard drugs you give somebody, you have to salvage as best you can with the drugs you have left," says Dr. Anthony Fauci of the National Institutes of Health.

Even some children with HIV are being put on kitchen sink therapy, which Dr. James Oleske of the New Jersey Medical School describes as "a last ditch sort of effort" when all else has failed.

Doctors fear that many people now on drug cocktails may become resistant to their regular drug combinations and will be forced to move on to kitchen sink therapy. That's problematic because the therapy has a low success rate, and the highly toxic drugs often make patients sick.

"I had lost 25 pounds due to diarrhea," says patient Steven Gendin, who eventually had to abandon his seven-drug regimen. "I'd become severely anemic and needed blood transfusions as well as all sorts of growth stimulators."

Gendin now waits for the development of new HIV therapies that might work better.

"It makes it absolutely compelling that we need to find newer drugs that are as powerful or more powerful than the existing drugs," Fauci says.

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