Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, February 11, 1991                   TAG: 9102110082
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: A-4   EDITION: STATE 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: RICHMOND                                LENGTH: Medium

PHYSICIANS GET FEDERAL FUNDS FOR AIDS STUDY/ RICHMOND GROUP TO TEST NEW DRUGS

The Richmond AIDS Coalition, a consortium of more than a dozen physicians who treat most of the area's AIDS patients, received a $2.2 million contract to study the new drugs.

Lisa Cox, a clinical social worker with the consortium, said the group's 18 physicians are seeing about 1,000 people in the area who are infected by the AIDS virus.

The studies are part of a national AIDS research program being carried out in 14 community-based coalitions of physicians, supported by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, a component of the National Institutes of Health.

Dr. Thomas M. Kerkering, an infectious disease specialist at the Medical College of Virginia Hospitals, is the principal investigator for the contract.

Two drugs might prove to be alternatives to AZT, the only anti-viral drug approved by the Food and Drug Administration so far to treat AIDS. Two other agents are being studied to see if either may prevent a serious brain infection due to a relatively common parasitic agent.

Two of the drugs being evaluated are dideoxyinosine and dideoxycytidine. Preliminary studies indicate that the agents are effective against the AIDS virus; like AZT, ddI and ddC interfere with the virus' ability to multiply and infect other cells.

Kerkering said the agents are to be tested in people for whom AZT treatment has failed, or who have had to stop taking AZT because of its side effects. The studies will be conducted in about 400 people nationwide over a two-year period.

Two other agents are to be studied for their possible effectiveness in preventing a brain infection, toxoplasmosis encephalitis, caused by an organism that can be introduced into the body by eating undercooked or raw meat. That study will last two to three years and is to involve about 750 patients.

People with AIDS, whose immune systems are weakened, are particularly vulnerable to toxoplasmosis. Kerkering said recent studies show that more than one out of four people infected by the AIDS virus also have been exposed to the toxoplasmosis organism sometime in their lives.