Subject: Italian Drug to Be Tested Against AIDS in the U.S.
Date: Published: 9/27/89 (42 lines)
Source:  Wall Street Journal.  Copyright Dow Jones & Co. Inc. 

    Technology:
    Italian Drug to Be Tested
    Against AIDS in the U. S. 

    PALO ALTO, Calif.  -- Two Stanford University researchers
 said an Italian drug is to be tested soon as a means of
 suppressing the AIDS virus.
    Drs. Leonard and Leonore Herzenberg, a husband-and-wife
 team of Stanford geneticists, speculate that the drug,
 N-acetylcysteine, or NAC, made by Zambon Group of Italy, may
 counteract the virus-boosting effects of the tumor-necrosis
 factor, or TNF. A naturally occuring protein, TNF is believed
 to activate the AIDS virus, and to cause the cachexia or
 wasting associated with acquired immune deficiency syndrome.
    Currently, the drug NAC is used in the U. S. as an antidote
 for overdoses of acetominophen, or Tylenol.  In Europe, it is
 used to treat bronchitis.
    Leonore Herzenberg said the drug is slated for a
 "community-based trial," run by practicing doctors rather
 than the research establishment; she declined to identify who
 the trial organizers would be.
    Amid the wild acclamation sometimes given the AIDS drug
 fads, Dr. Herzenberg urged patients not to rush into
 self-experimentation with NAC. 
    "We hope things won't go crazy," she said.  "This is a lab
 result.  We don't know if it works in humans.  It works in the
 test tube."
    But even while asserting test-tube efficacy, Dr. 
 Herzenberg acknowledged that the researchers hadn't, in fact,
 tested NAC against live AIDS virus.  Instead, NAC was tested
 in a simulation that combined kidney cells and AIDS virus
 genes.  Other reseachers question the validity of this
 screening system.

[This article is made available here by Dow Jones Co. for the 
personal and non-commercial use of callers to this bbs, in the 
hope that it will be of some help to those who are suffering 
from the disease and others who are seeking to help them.]