Garrett A. Duncan, Ph.D,
"a terrific asset as a teacher and colleague"
|
Garrett A. Duncan, Ph.D, "a terrific asset as a teacher and colleague" |
|
|
|
|
|
|
||||||
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
 |
|
New unit offers new hope
Kids with HIV have local access to clinical trials By Darrell E. Ward A new Pediatric AIDS Clinical Trials Unit (PACTU) in the School of Medicine provides local access to clinical trials for children and teens with HIV infection. Previously, children in the region who were infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, had to travel to the National Institutes of Health in Washington, D.C., to participate in clinical trials for the disease.
Clinical trials offered by the unit focus on testing new drugs and drug combinations to fight the virus. Some studies track the course of the disease in children taking medication and test the effectiveness of drugs and therapeutic vaccines in boosting the body's response to HIV. The unit, which opened last May, also will participate in studies investigating ways to further reduce transmission of HIV from infected pregnant women to their babies. The medical school's pediatric infectious diseases program follows about 50 patients under age 21 who are infected with HIV, most of whom are older children or teenagers, said Kathleen A. McGann, M.D., associate professor of pediatrics and co-director for the PACTU. "It is rare today to have an infant or baby as a new patient," McGann said. "It used to be that 25 percent to 30 percent of infants born to mothers with HIV infection acquired the virus. Now, it's 5 percent or less." This dramatic drop is due to the tremendous success of drug treatments that prevent transmission of HIV from mother to infant. For many people, the introduction of combination drug therapy in 1996 has changed HIV infection from a terminal illness to a chronic one. "Medications available today prolong life and improve the quality of life for many patients," McGann said. "Instead of slowly wasting away as they once did, the majority of children with HIV infection can go to school and participate in normal activities." But children infected with HIV still face an uncertain future. "The biggest challenge now is that children may develop viruses that are resistant to the medications," McGann said. "Our hope is that new drugs will be developed in time to help them." And as those drugs are developed, they will be tested through clinical trials. Trials also are needed to identify drugs and drug combinations that have fewer side effects and are less complicated. Some drug regimens today require that children take up to 20 pills a day. "We want to be optimistic, but no one knows how long these treatments will remain effective or what their long-term effects and complications will be," Storch said. "Unfortunately, we still have a long way to go in the fight against HIV disease." |
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
