Subject: `Compassionate Use' Sought For a New AIDS Medicine
Date: Published: 4/2/91 (38 lines)
Source: Wall Street Journal. Copyright Dow Jones & Co. Inc.

    Technology Brief -- Abbott Laboratories:
    `Compassionate Use' Sought
    For a New AIDS Medicine

    Abbott Laboratories, following pressure from AIDS
 activists, asked the U. S. Food and Drug Administration to
 allow certain AIDS patients to use the experimental drug
 clarithromycin.
    The pharmaceutical concern, based in North Chicago, Ill.,
 said its action results from "encouraging" findings in early
 trials of the drug.  Abbott said it found clarithromycin, in
 combination with the anti-AIDS drug AZT, doesn't increase the
 toxicity to a patient's liver already known to be caused by
 AZT.  Abbott is seeking so-called "compassionate use" status
 for the drug, which means the company may give it away,
 before final FDA approval, to patients who have exhausted
 other remedies.
    Abbott said the new medical data from its early U. S. and
 European experiments indicate clarithromycin is useful in
 eradicating or reducing a sometimes-fatal condition known as
 mycobacterium avium complex.  The condition includes symptoms
 such as chronic fever, night sweats, diarrhea, abdominal pain
 and chills.
    AIDS activists had called in early March for a boycott of
 Abbott products unless the company allowed compassionate use
 of the drug.  But Abbott said at the time that European trials
 had left questions about dose levels and safety.  The company
 said findings completed 10 days ago have answered those
 questions.

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