A new study has raised hopes that the immune system can be strengthened with one of his chemical messengers to increase the effectiveness of drugs against the virus AIDS.
in a report in the October 31 New England Journal of Medicine , Joseph Kovacs, Clifford Lane, and colleagues at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases treated 60 people infected HIV with either a combination of anti-HIV drugs or drugs and an immune system protein called interleukin-2 or IL-2. After 1 year, 29 patients who received IL-2 were more than twice as CD4 - white blood cells that HIV targets -. That controls
"I'm very enthusiastic about it," said Jay Levy, a retrovirologist at the University of California, San Francisco. "We need more studies of this nature that aim to restore the immune and not only focus on the destruction of the virus function."
In the IL-2 group, the number of CD4 cells increased an average of 428-916 per cubic millimeter of blood. In the control group, meanwhile, CD4 dropped from an average of 406 to 349. (health, uninfected people tend to have a number greater than 0.) The results verify similar results from a pilot study by Kovacs and Lane group published last year in the same journal.
researchers have yet to prove that patients with higher CD4 counts are healthier. And that gives clinicians AIDS as Robert Schooley of the University of Colorado serious reason to break. Although the data are "fascinating," said Schooley, it is concerned about the high costs of treatment and heavy fatigue, it tends to cause. ongoing studies, however, are intended to answer the big question :. If IL-2 regimen will lead to longer, healthier life for people infected with HIV
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