Roche's Invirase Confers Survival Benefit

Compared to a two-drug reverse transcriptase inhibitor regimen, triplecombination therapy with Hoffmann-La Roche's protease inhibitor Invirase (saquinavir), HIVID (zalcitabine) and Glaxo Wellcome's Retrovir (zidovudine) significantly delayed the onset of AIDS and prolonged survival by 50% in 3,485 treatment-naive patients.

Meantime, a second study involved 12 patients who had been exposed to three protease inhibitors and were failing on current therapies. Patients were given a six-drug combination, zalcitabine, saquinavir, Bristol-Myers Squibbs' Zerit (stauvudine), Glaxo Wellcome's Epivir (lamivudine), Agouron's Viracept (nelfinavir) and Boehringer Ingelheim's Viramune (nevirapine). At the end of 12 weeks, 75% of the patients who had stuck with the drug regimen achieved viral load below the limits of detection. The range of CD4 cell count increases was 30-370 cells.

Furthermore, another trial has shown that HIVID plus zidovudine is well-tolerated in antiretroviral-naive children and has a comparable side-effect profile to zidovudine monotherapy.