Word: interferon
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Reporting in the New England Journal of Medicine, two separate teams of scientists found that treatment with the drug interferon halted destruction of liver cells in about half the patients with chronic hepatitis. A total of 207 people were studied by the two teams, one led by investigators at the University of Florida, the other at the National Institute of Diabetes, Digestive and Kidney Diseases...
Even if Burroughs refuses to reduce its price further, some patients may begin paying less for AZT treatment. Doctors are discovering that combining the potent antiviral drug with such other formulas as interferon (an immune- system booster) or probenecid (an antigout drug) lowers the dose of AZT necessary for effective treatment. In addition, people who are infected with the AIDS virus but show no symptoms need only about half the full-strength dose to slow the course of the disease...
While the other astronauts continued to check out Discovery's systems, Pinky Nelson began the first of eleven science experiments: growing crystals, which form more precisely in zero gravity, of specialized proteins such as gamma interferon and an enzyme found in the AIDS virus. By studying the crystals, scientists at the Center for Macromolecular Crystallography at the University of Alabama-Birmingham hope to learn more about the structure of the proteins, which may enable researchers to create new disease-fighting drugs. Other experiments scheduled during the mission included the production and study of crystalline organic thin films, evaluation...
...them, sometimes in combined "cocktails," to boost the immune system against specific diseases. In clinical trials at Boston's New England Deaconess Hospital, Dr. Jerome Groopman has found that granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor reverses bone-marrow failure and boosts white-cell counts in AIDS patients. Gamma interferon seems to remedy the defective functioning of monocytes and macrophages in a wide variety of diseases. Alpha interferon has been particularly effective against two types of leukemia and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, a cancer of the lymph system. Says Dr. Jordan Gutterman, of Houston's M.D. Anderson Hospital and Tumor Institute: "There...
Interleukin-2 has shown promising results in treating advanced skin and kidney cancers. In fact, says Gutterman, there appears to be "tremendous synergy" between alpha interferon and IL-2 in attacking cancer cells. While IL-2 works to make the killer cells more potent, he explains, they "have to recognize something unique on the surface of the cancer cell in order to kill it." That something is an antigen, and interferon seems to make it more "visible" to the killer cells...