News (Updated
July 12, 2009)
[Home]
[Previous
news]
On Thursday July 9, 2009,
6:37 pm EDT
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The
Food and Drug Administration said Thursday it has approved expanded use of a
Merck & Co. HIV drug, Isentress.
Known chemically as
raltegravir, it is now approved for treating new and existing patients with the
virus that causes AIDS, in combination with other types of HIV drugs.
The drug got an
accelerated approval from FDA in October 2007, limiting it to use in patients
who had drug-resistant strains or were failing on other therapies, also in
combination with other HIV drugs. Now it can be used in all adult patients.
The recommended dose for
new adult patients is 400 milligrams twice daily, with or without food, FDA
said. The ruling was made Wednesday but announced late Thursday.
The approval was based on
a 48-week study comparing patients who took Isentress with patients who took
another HIV drug, Sustiva. Both groups also took two other HIV drugs.
Isentress is an integrase
inhibitor, meaning it works by blocking the enzyme integrase, one of three types
of enzymes the AIDS virus uses to reproduce and infect cells.
Tue Jul 7, 7:27 pm ET
Advocacy groups and drug
benefit providers sued Abbott in 2004. They alleged the
The company paid $10
million to settle the lawsuit and agreed to let the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of
Appeals still determine if the price hike was an illegal business practice.
The court ruled in
Abbott's favor Tuesday. If it had lost, Abbott would have had to pay an
additional $17.5 million.
A lawyer for the advocacy
groups says they're weighing whether to appeal the decision.
Mon Jul 6, 2009 1:24pm EDT
By Megan Rauscher
While black Americans are
disproportionately affected by HIV/AIDS, most studies have found that black gay
men don't engage in higher risk sexual activity any more frequently than other
gay men, H. Fisher Raymond and Willi McFarland of the San Francisco Department
of Public Health point out in a report in the journal AIDS and Behavior.
To study the influence of
social and sexual mixing between racial and ethnic groups of gay men in
They found that black gay
men were three times more likely to have sexual partners that were also black,
than would be expected by chance alone.
In addition, black gay men
were the least preferred of sexual partners by other races and were believed to
be riskier to have sex with, which can lead to men of other races avoiding black
men as sexual partners.
Black gay men were also
counted less often among friends and were perceived as less welcome at the
common venues that cater to gay men in
These influences, Raymond
told Reuters Health, push black gay men closer together in smaller social and
sexual networks - "networks that are already at higher risk for HIV
infection merely because the background prevalence of HIV is higher than in
other groups."
"Social and sexual
networks are directly related to how much risk we expose ourselves to (and) it
seems clear that these networks are influenced by both forces an individual can
control and those that one can't," Raymond said.
"Of our findings,
social networks and access to community spaces may be the areas most amenable to
action," Raymond said. "Acting on personal preferences in sexual
partners may not be, however raising awareness that personal preferences may be
shaped by underlying negative racial stereotypes or history isn't without
merit," he added.
"The racial disparity
in HIV observed for more than a decade," Raymond and McFarland conclude in
their report, "will not disappear until the challenges posed by a legacy of
racism toward blacks in the
SOURCE: AIDS and Behavior,
June 2009.