NAC Well-Tolerated But Shows No Benefit to Patients with HIV in Preliminary Study

National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases
Update
EMBARGOED FOR RELEASE NATIONAL INSTITUTES OF HEALTH
Monday, July 20, 1992 Greg Folkers
9:45 a.m. (3:45 a.m. EDT) [phone]
NAC Well-Tolerated But Shows No Benefit to Patients
with HIV in Preliminary Study
Various doses of the drug N-acetyl-L-cysteine (NAC), given intravenously and orally
to HIV-infected volunteers, appear safe and well-tolerated, according to preliminary results
of a National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases study. However, NAC so far has
offered little evidence of effectiveness against HIV at the doses tested.
Robert E. Walker, M.D., senior investigator in the NIAID Laboratory of
Immunoregulation, plans to present the findings of the Phase I/1I study in an oral presentation
at the VIII International Conference on AIDS in Amsterdam on July 20.
"Despite major advances in treating HIV disease, there is still a need for more
effective, less toxic treatments," says Dr. Walker. "NAC has shown promise in laboratory
tests, and our study, which is ongoing, seeks to establish dosing levels of the drug that are
safe and have anti-HIV activity."
Scientists believe that NAC may help protect certain immune system cells from HIV,
perhaps by boosting the levels of glutathione, an amino acid derivative essential to normal
immune function.
Twenty-three HIV-infected volunteers have enrolled in the study at the Clinical Center
at the National Institutes of Health. Each volunteer was assigned to one of five groups, and
each successive group received progressively higher doses of NAC. In each group, patients

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