A.I.D.S. drug still years away, says expert

Press, 17 February 1986, Page 10

A.I.D.S. drug still years away, says expert

NZPA-Reuter Newcastle, England A drug to save A.I.D.S. sufferers is still several years away and will not be a cure but a life-long course of treatment, according to a leading American expert. Dr Paul Volberding told Reuters at Britain’s first big A.I.D.S. conference it would taKe a long time to perfect an antiviral drug which had no serious sideeffects. About 25,000 cases of acquired immune deficiency syndrome have been reported world wide since the epidemic was first identified in the United States five years ago. British experts told the Government - sponsored conference that the disease had spread mainly among young homosexual men, haemophiliacs and drug addicts, groups susceptible in different ways to blood contact with the virus. But they said the threat remained of a general outbreak of the disease, which seriously damages the body’s immune system and lays it open to cancers and other infections. Dr Volberding, dire6ft)r

of the A.I.D.S. clinic of San Francisco General Hospital, said, “Our first success will come when we develop an antiviral drug. It will be several years at least before anything effective is found.”

Beyond a certain stage of A.1.D.5., he said, some of the body’s defences were probably damaged beyond repair. “No drug will cure the infection, so it will be a lifelong treatment.” Sufferers would be given regular doses of a drug to prevent the virus HTLV-3 from multiplying, he said, but the virus would remain in the body. Dr Volberding said science did not have a great success rate with antiviral drugs. It still had to find one against flu. “People will take a drug that makes them feel better but if they already feel fine they are not going to take something that makes them vomit,” he said.

“It must also have no cumulative side effects over months or years because it has to be taken for life.. I think compliance could be a terrific problem.” Recently two United States doctors said they estimated that between 100,000 and a million Americans might develop A.1.D.5.-related brain disorders in the next 15 years.