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"Docs: HIV treatment timeouts
dangerous"
The
Star (www.thestar.com.my)
(01/12/06)
BOSTON: Doctors seeking to reduce the dangerous side effects of long-term
HIV therapy have discovered that taking a breather is not better.
People infected with the HIV virus and who have treatment timeouts are more
than twice as likely to die or suffer other serious consequences than those
kept on a steady diet of drugs, a study published in this week's New England
Journal of Medicine shows.
The study was supposed to follow patients for six years, but it was called
off after about 16 months because the dangers of intermittent treatment are
so high.
And while doctors expected the risk of heart, liver and kidney disease to
decline with intermittent drug use, primarily because those were regarded as
side effects of the newest HIV medicines, the likelihood of those problems
actually increased.
“Treatment may increase the risk, but the absence of treatment appears to
increase the risk even more,” said James Neaton of the University of
Minnesota.
Under the rules of the study, 2,720 volunteers from 33 countries were given
holidays of various lengths from their drug therapy once their CD4+ counts,
a measure of the health of the immune system, hit 350. Drug treatment
resumed if their counts dropped below 250.
Fifty-five of those who had intermittent treatment died from various causes,
while 30 who had continual treatment died, the study said.
Doctors involved in the study had hoped that patients could take a break
from HIV treatment because the therapy is difficult and expensive. — Reuters
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