TBO.com - TBO is Tampa Bay Online

HIV Drugs Also Help New Patients

ADVERTISEMENT

The Associated Press

The Tampa Tribune

Published: October 27, 2008

TRENTON, N.J. - Two HIV drugs approved last year for patients who have developed resistance to older drugs also work well with new patients, and with fewer troubling side effects than a widely used regimen, according to the drugs' manufacturers.

Late-stage, company-funded studies on the drugs, aimed at winning approval to also market them for previously untreated patients, were presented Sunday at a conference of infectious disease specialists in Washington, D.C.

"There was a desperate unmet medical need for those patients who had failed other therapies" until recent years, said Robin Isaacs, the executive director for infectious disease clinical research at Merck & Co.
Isaacs said that Merck's Isentress and Pfizer Inc.'s Selzentry, both of which were approved last year, helped address that need, along with three other new drugs: Boehringer Ingelheim's Aptivus and Johnson & Johnson's Prezista and Intelence, made by its Tibotec Therapeutics unit.

"They have all these different options now, which they didn't before, to build new successful regimens," Isaacs said.

Prezista, which had been approved only for previously treated patients, got Food and Drug Administration approval Wednesday to also be sold to new patients as part of a multidrug "cocktail."

Share this:

Loading Comments...

Email Print

ADVERTISEMENT