French Antiviral PB-100 Ruled As Ineffective

Jean-Francois Girard, director general for health in France, has stated that an enquiry carried out by the national agency for research on AIDS has found no evidence to justify the use of PB-100, an unlicensed antiviral manufactured from extracts of the Brazilian tree Pao pereira, in the treatment of HIV infection.

The drug, according to a report in the British Medical Journal (July 16), has been prescribed to hundreds of patients with AIDS over the past six years. Hospital and laboratory studies carried out by the national agency found that the product had no specific in vitro activity against HIV, and only demonstrated any inhibition of viral replication at levels which were on the point of triggering huge cellular toxicity.

PB-100 was designed by a former researcher at the Pasteur Institute, Mirko Beljanski. Dr Beljanski claimed that the tree extract functioned in a similar way to antivirals such as zidovudine and zalcitabine, through inhibition of reverse transcriptase.