An experimental AIDS drug from Johnson & Johnson reduced the virus to undetectable levels in patients who no longer responded to currently available treatments, a study published Thursday said.
Researchers gave 304 patients the medicine, etravirine, and 308 others got a dummy pill. More HIV-infected patients on the drug had reduced levels of the virus. The drug may offer patients who can’t use current drugs a treatment option, said the authors, led by Jose Valdez Madruga of the Centro de Referenia e Treinamento DST/AIDS in São Paolo, Brazil.
HIV often mutates to become resistant to doctors’ first treatment choices.
There are an estimated 39.5 million people living with the disease, according to the World Health Organization, and last year 2.9 million people died of AIDS-related illnesses.
“This is absolutely a breakthrough,” Tony Mills, an HIV specialist in private practice in Los Angeles, said in an interview. “This is an amazing opportunity for patients who don’t have a lot of options.”
The trial enrolled some of the sickest patients, said Mills, one of the co-authors of the study. The drug was used alongside Johnson & Johnson’s HIV drug Prezista. Hundreds of thousands of patients could benefit from etravirine, Mills said.
Pushing a patient’s viral count below a detectable level is important for doctors because the virus can no longer become resistant. For patients, it often changes their mental and emotional outlook.
The results suggest the drug is “an encouraging new agent in this antiretroviral class,” the authors said.
The research was published in the medical journal The Lancet.
Etravirine, also known as TMC125, works by blocking a protein that HIV needs to make copies of itself.
The study, the last of three usually needed for approval, will be submitted to regulators, Johnson & Johnson said in an e-mailed statement.
All patients received an additional regimen of antiviral drugs.
