Targeting a Deadly Scrap of Genetic Code

摘要

Nineteen ninety-six may go down as the year AIDS treatment came of age. By combining new drugs called protease inhibitors with old workhorses like AZT, desperately ill patients are achieving miraculous remissions. Newly infected patients are holding HIV at exceedingly low levels in their bloodstreams. And researchers who once dreamed of turning HIV infection from a death sentence into a manageable condition now muse about clearing the virus entirely from people's bodies. Unfortunately, this doesn't mean the fight is over. The wondrous new drug combinations can be toxic, unwieldy and ineffective. And because they're so new, no one knows how long their best effects will last. "We may be winning the battle," says Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, "but we have a long way to go to prove that."