Once-daily Pill Could Simplify HIV TreatmentBristol-Myers Squibb and Gilead Sciences have

Once-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/ AIDS, for example, are all treated with (51) of drugs. But that can mean a lot of pills to take. It would be (52) 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 (53) treatment for HIV, the virus, that causes AIDS. The companies are Bristol-Myers Squibb and Gilead Sciences. They have (54) a single pill that combines three drugs currently on the market. Bristol-Myes Squibb sells one of them (55) the name of Sustiva. Gilead combined the (56) , Emtriva and Viread, into a single pill in two thousand four.

Combining drugs involves more than (57) issues. It also involves issues of competition (58) the drugs are made by different companies. The new once-daily pill is the result of (59) is described as the first joint venture agreement of its kind in the treatment of HIV.

In January the New England Journal of Medicine published a study of the new pill. Researchers compared its (60) to that of the widely used combination of Sustiva and Combivir. Combivir (61) two drugs, AZT and 3TC. The researchers say that after one year of treatment, the new pill suppressed HIV levels in more patients and with (62) side effects. Gilead paid for the study. Professor Joel Gallant at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland, led the research.

Glaxo Smith Kine reacted (63) the findings by saying that a single study is of limited value. It says the effectiveness of Combivir has been shown in each of more than fifty studies.

The price of the new once-daily pill has not been announced. But Gilead and Bristol-Myers Squibb say they will provide it at reduced cost to developing countries. They plan in the next few months to ask the United States Food and Drug Administration to (64) the new pill.

There are limits to who could take it because of the different drugs it contains. For example, (65) women are told not to take Sustiva because of the risk of birth disorders. Experts say more that forty million people around the world are living with HIV.

(51)

A．conservation

B．cooperation

C．combinations

D．considerations