Drug conserving trial SMART which was aimed to reduce the side effects and cost of the drugs involved in daily routine therapy with anti-retroviral has been halted.
The National Institute of Health has asked to stop SMART trial (Strategies for Management of Anti-retroviral Therapy) which is a trial on AIDS patients who are undergoing Anti-retroviral therapy which recommends patients to have the drugs only when it is required contrasting to routine therapy which requires daily intake of these drugs.
The drug-conserving trial which is aimed at reducing the side effects of the drug and also helps economically by reducing the amount of money spent on AIDS drugs. The drug is recommended only when the CD4+ counts of the immune system of the patients gets reduced.The SMART study had more than 5,000 study recruits from 33 countries and the NIH funded the drug conserving trial which it found would help the patients but NIH found that the patients who took off from the drug got more sicker than the patients who took anti-retroviral drugs daily. The results of the study made NIH to ask its collaborators to stop the trial immediately and as asked the patients to continue with daily medications.
