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Once-daily Pill
Could Simplify HIV Treatment{{/B}} Bristol-Myers Squibb and Gilead Sciences have combined many HIV drugs into a single pill. Sometimes the best medicine is more than one kind of medicine. Malaria, tuberculosis and HIV/ AIDS, for example, are all treated with {{U}}(51) {{/U}} of drugs. But that can mean a lot of pills to take. It would be {{U}}(52) {{/U}} if drug companies combined all the medicines into a single pill, taken just once a day. Now, two companies say they have done that for people just {{U}}(53) {{/U}} treatment for HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. The companies are Bristol-Myers Squibb and Gilead Sciences. They have {{U}}(54) {{/U}} a single pill that combines three drugs currently on the market. Bristol-Myers Squibb sells one of them {{U}}(55) {{/U}} the name of Sustiva. Gilead combined the {{U}}(56) {{/U}}, Emtriva and Viread, into a single pill in two thousand four. Combining drugs involves more than {{U}}(57) {{/U}} issues. It also involves issues of competition {{U}}(58) {{/U}} the drugs are made by different companies. The new once-daily pill is the result of {{U}} (59) {{/U}}is described as the first joint venture agreement of its kind in the treatment of HIV. In January the New England Journal of Medicine4 published a study of the new pill. Researchers compared its {{U}}(60) {{/U}} to that of the widely used combination of Sustiva and Combivir. Combivir {{U}}(61) {{/U}} two drags, AZT and 3TC. The researchers say that after one year of treatment, the new pill suppressed HIV levels in more patients and with {{U}}(62) {{/U}} side effects. Gilead paid for the study. Professor Joel Gallant at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland, led the research. He is a paid adviser to Gilead and Bristol-Meyers Squibb as well as the maker of Combivir, Glaxo Smith Kline. Glaxo Smith Kline reacted {{U}}(63) {{/U}} the findings by saying that a single study is of limited value. It says the effectiveness of Combivir has been shown in each of more than fifty studies. The price of the new once-daily pill has not been announced. But Gilead and Bristol-Myers Squibb say they will provide it at reduced cost to developing countries. They plan in the next few months to ask the United States Food and Drug Administration9 to {{U}}(64) {{/U}} the new pill. There are limits to who could take it because of the different drugs it contains. For example, {{U}}(65) {{/U}} women are told not to take Sustiva because of the risk of birth disorders. Experts say more than forty million people around the world are living with HIV. |