Subject: Herpes Drug Displays Role Against AIDS 
Date: Published: 12/30/91 (51 lines)
Source: Wall Street Journal. Copyright Dow Jones & Co. Inc.

    Herpes Drug
    Displays Role
    Against AIDS
    ----
    By Tony Horwitz
    Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal

    LONDON -- A mixture of drugs including a widely available
 herpes medication has been found effective in lowering the
 death rate from AIDS, according to British doctors and the
 manufacturer of the drug.
    The drug, acyclovir, is made by Wellcome PLC's Wellcome
 Foundation Ltd. unit, a London-based pharmaceuticals company,
 and marketed under prescription as Zovirax.  In a
 Wellcome-funded clinical test, 10% of AIDS patients given a
 combination of acyclovir and AZT, an AIDS drug also made by
 Wellcome, died over a one-year period.  Of those given AZT
 alone, 20% died over the same period.  The three-year study
 has been suspended so all patients may be given the mixture.
    One of the study's coordinators, Dr. Paul Griffiths of
 London's Royal Free Hospital, was quoted in London's Sunday
 Times as saying that acyclovir appeared to slow
 cytomegalovirus, or CMV, a virus that researchers believe
 speeds the onset of full-blown AIDS symptoms.
    Dr. Griffiths couldn't be reached for comment Sunday.  But
 a spokeswoman for the Royal Free Hospital School of Medicine
 said the trials were carried out on 300 patients with
 advanced AIDS symptoms in Britain, Germany and Australia.
 Half of the patients were given the mix of acyclovir and AZT,
 and half weren't, in a double blind trial, meaning that
 neither patients nor those treating them knew which half
 acted as the control group.
    Earlier studies mixing the two drugs in America and
 Holland haven't shown that acyclovir is effective in
 combatting AIDS.  Results from the new study are expected to
 be published early next year.
    Both acyclovir and AZT are already approved prescription
 drugs, available in the U. S. and Europe.  A Wellcome
 spokeswoman, Rosemary Hennings, said Sunday that "we need to
 fully analyze the data" before assessing the clinical tests'
 commercial impact.  Acyclovir, Wellcome's best-selling drug,
 accounted for #471 million ($888.1 million) of Wellcome's
 #1.61 billion of sales in the year ended August 1991.

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