By Jeff Zeleny
Breakfast typically gives
one food for thought, but
Yung-Kang Chow's breakfast
one morning yielded more
than a thought, it produced a
possible solution.
Chow may have discov
ered the cure for AIDS.
A Harvard medical
student, Chow clinched his
work on a three-drug combi
nation that is hoped to
significantly change AIDS
research across the country.
Chow’s drug combination
4 .
of the current AIDS fighting
drugs, AZT and DDt, plus the
drug Nevirapine, makes the
three-drug plan look positive,
said Dr. Susan Swindells,
medical director of the UNMC
HIV Clinic.
The University of Ne
braska Medical Center was
one of 20 centers chosen by
the National Institute of
Health as a drug testing site.
UNMC will work in coopera
tion with the AIDS Clinical
Trial Network, an organization
of doctors and researchers
from around the country.
Although some see the
work at the 20 centers as
duplication, Swindells said it
was good to have the testing
going on at many venues.
“It makes it a lot more
efficient when people are
doing the same thing,” she
said, “so we can all compare
apples to apples.”
The treatment plan won’t
start at UNMC until June,
when it receives approval
from the Food and Drug
Administration. Preliminary
test tube experiments
produced positive results, but
that is no guarantee it will be
successful.
“People are very different
than test tubes, of course,”
Swindells said.
When used separately,
the drugs help cure certain
parts of the disease but have
no affect on others. The drug
combination is expected to
stop the virus from dividing
and multiplying, Swindells
said, but the virus still
wouldn’t be killed.
AIDS research has grown
consistently since Swindells
came to UNMC 18 months
ago. Over 460 patients from
Nebraska, Iowa, South
Dakota, North Dakota and
Kansas are now enrolled in
the HIV Clinic, which opened
in 1987.
Most patients in the clinic
are HIV-infected. Only 100
have full-blown AIDS,
Swindells said. Almost all of
the clinic patients participate
in the research studies, which
provide free benefits.
Patients get paid for
studies that they don’t benefit
from. One such study
involves HIV-infected smok
ers. Doctors probe patient's
lungs, which isn’t a pleasant
process, she said.
“They personally aren’t
benefitting, just the society at
large benefits."
It is difficult to turn people
away from research studies,
but Swindells said all 460
patients can’t participate.
"We don’t always have a
study for everyone," she said.
“All of the studies have
inclusion criteria, sometimes
people aren’t eligible.”
Patients that actively
abuse alcohol or other drugs
are always denied participa
tion in research studies,
Swindells said.
“It doesn’t help anyone if
they refuse to comply.”
Finances play no part in
treatment, Swindells said, and
patients without health
insurance are usually treated.
“It doesn’t matter to me,
but sometimes we do have to
make judgments.”
Many research studies at
UNMC involve HIV-infected
hemophiliac children. Growth
development studies are
done on the children to see
how they compare to their
healthy siblings.
“We basically monitor a
lot of things about these kids,”
Swindells said, "what (their)
cognitive skills are and sexual
development."
Although UNMC is a small
AIDS facility in comparison to
other centers in the United
States, Swindells said
Nebraskans and other
Midwesterners are fortunate
to have any type of AIDS
clinic, let alone one with the
quality and technology of
UNMC’s.
“Just because you live in
Nebraska doesn’t mean you
can’t get the research.
“I compete with New York,
Miami and California," she
said. “It’s taken some work to
get the foot into the door."
The competitive efforts
paid off and helped bring a
new blood-filtering device to
the medical center for a
treatment test study which will
begin this month.
UNMC will be the first test
site for the device which
removes blood substances
that cause complicating
symptoms to the AIDS virus.
“Why does this thing in
white blood cells make you
ill?" she said. “We don’t
understand the fever,
sweating and rashes.” |
The filtering device
cleanses the blood of bad
proteins through the four-hour
plasmapheresis and returns it
back to the body. The
approach is similar to one
used on cancer patients.
The device can’t be used
until approval is granted from
the FDA, she said.
“Whenever you do a study
the FDA is all over you," she
said. "They must jump I
through a lot of hoops.
“The first test isn’t Will It
work?’ it’s 'Is it safe?"*
[This blood-filtering device
will be used in the AIDS
study at UNMC.
ROBIN TRIMARCHI/SOWER