New Class of AIDS Drug Offers Advantages in Ease of Use

A newly approved medicine has enabled doctors to develop AIDS drug cocktails that are easier to take, cause fewer side effects and appear to work effectively in both children and adults. Two new studies in today’s New England Journal of Medicine suggest that Sustiva, one of a new class of AIDS medicines, may actually work better than the standard treatment, perhaps because it requires fewer pills and has fewer side effects, so that patients are more likely to take it regularly.

Sustiva, generically called efavirenz, is known as a non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitor. Like older AIDS drugs, such as AZT, it blocks a certain enzyme the virus needs to reproduce, but it does so in a different way.

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Compiled by Times medical writer Thomas H. Maugh II