BOSTON, Feb. 12 (UPI) -- A long-acting type of interferon usually used to treat hepatitis C also could be a potent treatment for early HIV infections, researchers reported Wednesday.
Six months of treatment with the drug called PegIntron not only reduced active human immunodeficiency virus but also boosted the immune system, said Dr. Norbert H. Brockmeyer of Ruhr University, Bochum, Germany. The viral load, a measure of HIV activity, dropped by more than 800 percent while CD-4 cells, a measure of the body's immune system activity, increased by 30 percent.
He presented the results at the 10th Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections in Boston.
PegIntron, or pegylated interferon Alfa-2b as it is known medically, was a major breakthrough for treatment of hepatitis C because it allows for once-a-week treatment rather than daily injections of interferon. Interferon is a difficult drug to tolerate because often it causes severe headaches, flu-like illness, fatigue and depression in patients. PegIntron has these same side effects but the once a week dosing cuts down on the frequency.
Brockmeyer studied 10 patients with early stage HIV. All patients had no symptoms and had not yet received treatment for the virus. At baseline, Brockmeyer tested the patients' blood to determine both CD-4 count and viral load.
Five patients, all men, were assigned to weekly PegIntron injections while the other five patients -- two women and three men -- received no treatment.
At baseline the average CD-4 count in the group that received PegIntron was 462 while the average baseline CD-4 count in the control group was 535. After six months, the average CD-4 count in the treatment group had increased to 611 while the average CD-4 in the control group had dropped to 450.
The differences in viral loads -- a term that refers to the amount of viral genetic material circulating in the blood -- dropped form 22,158 copies/ml to 3,039 copies/ml. At the same time the viral load in the control group patients went from 7,136 copies/ml to 40,092 copies.
Moreover, there were no serious side-effects in the treatment group, a finding many researchers found surprising.
Dr. Robert Schooley of the University of Colorado Health Center in Denver, who was not associated with the study, said most interferon studies report a higher rate of side-effects.
"This is a little surprising," he said, but noted the ease of treatment may be from the low dose used by Brockmeyer. The dose was about half of the standard PegIntron dose.
Brockmeyer said the results were so impressive his group is now conducting a larger study that combines the drug with standard HIV antiretroviral treatment. Schooley said several other researchers have similar pegylated interferon studies underway.
The study was funded by the German Competence Network HIV/AIDS Ministry of Sciences.
