Word: azt
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Citing doctor-patient confidentiality, Mellman will not discuss Johnson's treatment or current condition. But in an interview with TIME last week, Johnson acknowledged that he has in the past taken AZT, the antiviral drug typically administered when a person's helper T-cell count drops to 500. (See following story.) Johnson said that he is no longer taking AZT and that his T-cell count is above 500, "but I don't tell exactly what it is because then I'll have everybody talking about it." His health, he says, "has been wonderful. My doctor told me to watch...
...report from Merck that a second drug, indinavir, used in combination with two other drugs, AZT and 3TC, reduced the levels of HIV in the blood of 24 patients an unprecedented 1,000 times...
...third stage of infection begins when the helper T-cell count drops from an average of 1,000 cells per milliliter of blood to fewer than 500. Doctors tend to treat that number as an imaginary tripwire. When a patient hits it, they issue a prescription for AZT, the original anti-HIV drug and still the most widely prescribed. Unfortunately, AZT by itself is only marginally effective. The virus is notoriously changeable. Within 18 months, it usually manages to mutate into a form that is no longer susceptible to AZT or any of its chemical cousins...
...protease inhibitors live up to their potential, it's not clear who will be able to afford them. By some estimates, the new drugs will cost $500 to $600 a month--probably for the rest of a patient's life. That's on top of standard treatment with AZT and its cousins, which runs approximately $400 a month. Hospitalization and other medical care in the final stages of the disease can add $150,000. Future treatments could dwarf even that. "Where is this going if we don't wake up?" asks Dr. Max Essex of the Harvard AIDS Institute...
...PROGRESS AGAINST AIDS Doctors discovered two groups of people who had been inadvertently protected against the aids virus by other infections, raising hope for the future development of an hiv vaccine. Meanwhile, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved new drugs that work with azt to boost the immune system...