FDA Approves New Drug to Treat AIDS

The Food and Drug Administration has approved a new AIDS drug, despite conflicting evidence on how well it works. Stockholm-based Pharmacia & Upjohn’s delavirdine will be on pharmacy shelves within a month under the brand name Rescriptor. Delavirdine is one of a class of drugs called non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors and are not considered as powerful as the protease inhibitors that are making headlines for fighting the HIV virus. But delavirdine can be used in combination with other medicines to treat patients with acquired immune deficiency syndrome and those newly infected with HIV. One study showed delavirdine taken with the drug AZT modestly helped early-stage patients’ immune systems and killed twice as much of their HIV virus as AZT alone. But a study of severely ill patients found that benefit lasted only 12 weeks when they took delavirdine with another older medicine, ddI.