AIDS Drugs Halt Brain Disease, Researchers Find

CHICAGO — A progressive brain disease that attacks most AIDS patients was halted, and in some cases reversed, when treated with a powerful class of AIDS drugs, a study presented Tuesday found.

HIV-encephalopathy, which leads to a loss of mental and motor function, stabilized or improved in a majority of patients treated with protease inhibitors, a family of AIDS drugs proven to have a powerful effect on the virus, according to results presented at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America.

Dr. Christopher Filippi, director of neuroradiology at New York’s Weiler Hospital, and researchers at Yale-New Haven Medical Center studied 16 patients with AIDS dementia. Magnetic resonance imaging scans showed that dementia stabilized or almost completely disappeared in 89% of the patients given protease inhibitors, Filippi said.

Bright white patches are present in the brain scans of patients with dementia. The patches appear darker in patients treated with protease inhibitors.

The disease, which affects more than two-thirds of all AIDS patients, continued to progress in 86% of those not given the drugs, Filippi said.

It is unclear how or why protease inhibitors affect the central nervous system, he said.

The drugs, which first appeared on the market in early 1996, have been shown to reduce the number of infections and deaths in AIDS patients when taken in combination with other drugs, such as AZT.

One researcher who was not involved in the study said he is not convinced by the new findings. Dr. David Simpson, director of the neuro-AIDS research program at New York’s Mount Sinai Medical Center, said magnetic resonance imaging is not the best way to determine the progression of dementia.

“Dementia is a clinical diagnosis, based on thinking ability,” he said.