BOSTON, Massachusetts, Feb 12 (AFP) - Development of new drugs and improved, simplified therapies have given researchers an edge over the deadly AIDS virus, experts told a conference here.
"It's an exciting and important year for therapy," John Mellors, of the University of Pittsburg School of Medicine, told the 10th annual conference on retroviruses on Tuesday.
"It seems for the first time that we are begining to keep up with the virus in terms of its ability to develop resistance," Mellors said.
The cocktail of drugs that since the mid-1990s has transformed the HIV-AIDS infection from a death sentence to a chronic illness is about to expand, some 4,000 AIDS specialists gathered here for the week-long conference were told.
"The pipeline of new antiretrovirals is fuller than it has been for a long time. It's a bumper crop," Mellors said.
Researchers are testing drugs that would prevent the virus from attacking human cells and growing inside the body, Mellors said.
Six such drugs are ready for human testing and another dozen are almost ready for clinical tests, he said.
"The next antiretroviral agent that's likely to be approved, the T-20, already has a backup that has been specifically designed to inhibit T-20 resistant virus," Mellors said.
"So we have a drug that is not yet approved and we have a backup, should resistance develop to that drug," he said.
Anti-AIDS therapies have become simpler and their success rates have improved to 75-85 percent from 50-60 percent only a few years ago, Mellors said.
They are "approaching the ease with which we are treating common diseases like hypertension," Mellors said.
Today, instead of 10 to 20 pills taken twice or three times a day, therapies consist of two or three pills taken in the morning or evening, or one pill taken twice a day, he said.
The simplicity is all the more important because it allows treatment in developing nations, he said.
"HAART (Highly active anti-retroviral therapy) can be given in a hut," which makes it very effective at fighting AIDS in developing nations, Mellors said.
Meanwhile experimental vaccine therapies have yielded encouraging results.
By specifically boosting immune defenses against the HIV virus, the therapies would enable patients to interrupt the exhausting antiretroviral treatments.
On Wednesday, the National French Agency for AIDS Research (ANRS), will present the results of two studies that it conducted on experimental vaccine therapies.
The studies found that 25 percent of subjects who received the vaccine therapy could stop their antiretroviral treatment.
"There is a real demand (for such cessations) because a lot of patients get exhausted by their treatement," the ANRS said.
In order to determine how the long the effect will last, the patients will be monitored for two years, said Michel Kazatchkine, director of ANRS.
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