Volunteers for New York AZT Study Difficult to Find

Doctors performing a national study on the effects of an anti-AIDS drug have been stymied in New York City because of a lack of volunteers for the experiments, a published report said Sunday.

The shortage, which could slow the entire study of the drug AZT, is compounded because officials suspect that the few volunteers for the research in the city are cheating, the New York Times reported.

The situation is in marked contrast to trials in other sections of the country, where recruitment of volunteers for the federally funded study is proceeding more smoothly, the newspaper said.

AZT, or azidothymidine, is an anti-viral agent that has been shown to prolong the lives of seriously ill AIDS patients.

Dr. Henry Murray of Cornell University Medical Center, one of six medical centers in the city participating in the study, told the newspaper that he has been able to recruit only nine volunteers in more than five months.

Only 257 volunteers have been recruited in the city, the newspaper said. That is considered extremely low for a city that has at least 100,000 virus carriers eligible for the study.

Under the research program, people volunteer for three years and are given either AZT or a placebo, but they are not told what they are receiving.

Researchers fear that many New Yorkers are cheating on the study by taking other drugs and by trying to determine whether they are receiving AZT.

Those who find that they are taking placebos are dropping out of the study or getting the drug from other doctors, the paper said.