New AIDS Drug Approved

When Combined With Other HIV Medicines, Merck's Isentress May Help Immune Cells Rebound

(AP)  The government approved a novel anti-AIDS pill on Friday, offering a new option for hard-to-treat patients.

Manufacturer Merck & Co. of Whitehouse Station, N.J., said Isentress should be on pharmacy shelves within two weeks.

The AIDS virus uses three different enzymes to reproduce and infect cells. Numerous drugs are available that target two of those enzymes, called protease and reverse transcriptase.

Isentress is the first in a new class of medicines that blocks the third enzyme, called integrase. Added to "cocktails" of other HIV medicines, the drug can lower the amount of HIV in the blood and help infection-fighting immune cells rebound.

HIV mutates rapidly to resist various treatments, and the Food and Drug Administration approved use of Isentress in patients over age 16 whose blood tests show they are resistant to common older medications.

Side effects include diarrhea, nausea, headache and itching.

Patients take Isentress, also known as raltegravir, twice a day. A Merck spokeswoman said the drug would cost $27 a day, or $9,855 a year - in the range of other competitors.

It is the second novel HIV drug to win FDA approval in two months. Pfizer Inc.'s Selzentry works by yet another method, blocking a passage that HIV often uses to enter white blood cells.

[bks59]

but isn''t the issue really that it is infinitley more profitable to createa a treatment vs. cure!

[hypnotoad72]

HIV rapidly mutates; people who have it will continue to do what they do, which only exacerbates the problem as well... it''s a shame.

Gaye5 - Strange how cancer cures would be withheld - but it wouldn''t mean the scientists would be put out of work. They''d work on other maladies. Mind you, I think offshoring is putting more American scientists out of work than anything else... and like what you said about yours, I haven''t any proof corroborating my statement either. :)

[gaye5]

Hey, this is getting to sound just like all the new cancer curse!!!... Here we are, YET another new drug to cure Aids... what is it, time for collecting money for research again, just as they do for cancer.

Just before a drive to collect money for cancer research the media is full of how they are on the verge of a cure or have found one, yet the death rate from cancer is climbing and still no cure..
A President said 25 years ago that within 20 years cancer would be cured hmm.
I have a couple of friends who are scientists, and who developed a cure or two for cancer many years ago, and they have been written up in the medical journal because of it, yet where is it??? and how many years has research been going on for cancer.. yet isn''t it funny that the death rate from cancer is rising..and rising fast. If they cured cancer, millions of people would be out of jobs, and the money for research on it would stop..
Well maybe they keep cures a secret because the population is growing fast and cancer (and now AIDS) keeps the population down, and where is the other cures for disease... hmmm We have great experiments done but then we find that the drug has to be taken off the market because people are dying from it, so it is obvious that the studies are done on the unsuspecting public..