Onec-daily Pill Could Simplify HIV Treatment Bristol-Myers Squibb and Gilead Sciences have combined many HIV drugs into a single pill. Sometimes the best medicine is more than one kind of medicine. Malaria, tuberculosis and HIV/ ADDS2,for example, are all treated with____1____of drugs. But that can mean a lot of pills to take. It would be____2____if drug companies combined all the medicines into a single pill, taken just once a day. Now, two companies say they have done that for people just_____3___treatment for HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. The companies are Bristol-Myers Squibb and Gilead Sciences. They have______4__a single pill that combines three drugs currently on the market. Bristol-Myers Squibb sells one of them___5_____the name of Sustiva3. Gilead combined the____6____Emtriva and Viread, into a single pill in two thousand four. Combining drugs involves more than____7____issues. It also involves issues of competition___8_____the drugs are made by different companies. The new once-daily pill is the result of____9____is described as the first joint venture agreement of its kind in the treatment of HIV. In January the New England Journal of Medicine4 published a study of the new pill. Researchers compared its______10__to5 that of the widely used combination of Sustiva and Combivir. Combivir_____11___two drugs, AZT6 and 3TC7. The researchers say that after one year of treatment, the new pill suppressed HIV levels in more patients and with___12_____side effects8. Gilead paid for the study. Professor Joel Gallant at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland, led the research. He is a paid adviser to Gilead and Bristol-Meyers Squibb as well as the maker of Combivir, Glaxo Smith Kline. |