>>> The News: JAY KAY!
By staff writer Amir Blumenfeld
December 10, 2003
The real news (for boring people) The breakdown (for college people)
U.S. Study Finds ‘Best' AIDS Cocktail
By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Correspondent
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. researchers said on Wednesday they had established the “best” cocktail of AIDS drugs to start patients on — one that keeps the virus at bay for the longest time with the fewest side effects.
See kids, this is why you don't go off and have unprotected sex or use dirty needles. You get all kinds of horrible treatment, including the best doctors worldwide spending years and millions to find the best mixture of drugs and alcohol.
The cocktail includes the oldest HIV drug, GlaxoSmithKline's AZT, also known as zidovudine; Glaxo's Epivir, known as lamivudine or 3TC; and Bristol Myers Squibb's efavirenz, sold under the brand name Sustiva.
The FDA noted that generic versions of these products, called cocaine and heroin, are also available.
The researchers said their government-funded studies, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, were aimed at helping doctors and patients navigate through the maze of 19 HIV drugs.
During the study, doctors and patients also developed an extremely close bond. One doctor added that drug #16 (unknown to him as methamphetamine) helped his doctor/patient team navigate the maze in record time.
“These findings offer new insight into the most effective approach for treating previously untreated HIV-infected individuals,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said in a statement.
And all this time I thought it was the Claritin that was suppressing my HIV! I mean, umm, my “allergies and infectious diseases.”
“Until now, it has been unclear which sequences of antiretroviral regimens provide the greatest benefit to patients previously untreated,” said Dr. Gregory Robbins of Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, who led one of the studies.
Wait, Dr. Robbins? Is that you?! Remember when we got to that part in the maze and we totally didn't know where we were, and then you gave me that antiretroviral regimen and we started walking through walls??! Is that….the drug you're talking about?
“Findings from this and similar studies can help reduce some of the guesswork involved,” he added.
Well good thing, those mazes take forever.
Human immunodeficiency virus, which infects 40 million people around the world and 900,000 in the United States, is incurable and leads to AIDS. But a cocktail of drugs called highly active antiretroviral therapy can suppress the virus and keep patients healthy for years.
Okay listen, just tell me which stage I need to stay in to keep getting those cocktails. All this jibber jabber about “incurable” and “leads to” is irrelevant. DAMN those cocktails are good!
DOCTORS CONFUSED
Eventually one combination stops working and the patients must switch to a new mix. Doctors have been confused about when to start patients on drugs and which cocktail is the most effective.
The doctor behind the lab table then yelled, “REMIX, REMIX!! NEW SHIT!!”
Pharmaceutical companies keep adding drugs to the arsenal.
However, doctors declined to allow U.S. FDA inspectors into their labs, prompting France to add, “Okay, we'll give you another 30 days to come forward with these so-called ‘Sweet-ass Drugs' before we give you another 30 days to improve upon them after that.”
There are now four classes of HIV drugs on the market, and mixing at least two classes usually works best. They include the protease inhibitors and the non-nucleoside RTIs.
Who would have ever thought the government would be giving tips on which classes of drugs to mix together.
Robbins and colleagues compared four three-drug combinations in 620 patients in the United States and Italy over two years.
Despite 84 deaths and 244 new physiological addictions, Robbins and crew called the comparison study “a wild success,” and promised a followup rave/orgy for survivors in Amsterdam next spring.
They included Bristol's Videx, also called didanosine or ddI, and Zerit, also known as stavudine or d4T, plus either the NNRTI Sustiva, known generically as efavirenz, or the protease inhibitor nelfinavir, made by Pfizer-owned Agouron Pharmaceuticals under the brand name Viracept.
Again, the FDA insisted on noting that the cheaper, generic versions of these drugs, Ecstasy and Viagra, are already widely available via unlicensed, overseas websites and your inbox.
One combination seemed especially dangerous, they found.
Please, do tell…
“Subjects who initially received didanosine and stavudine had substantially more toxic effects than those who initially received zidovudine and lamivudine,” the researchers wrote.
And with that information, researchers announced to college students everywhere, COMMENCE UNPROTECTED SEX AND RAMPANT NEEDLE-SHARING!!