Heart Drug Boosts AZT Effect

A common heart drug substantially improves the ability of the AIDS-fighting drug AZT to stop the deadly virus from replicating in the test tube, researchers report.

But while laboratory experiments with the anti-clotting agent dipyridamole are encouraging, the broader implications for victims of acquired immune deficiency syndrome are unknown, said Dr. John Weinstein, a researcher at the National Cancer Institute.

In test tube experiments, he said, dipyridamole appears to help AZT combat the AIDS virus. “We have found that this drug substantially increases the activity of AZT against the AIDS virus in two types of cultured cells,” he said.

The researcher said dipyridamole, whose brand name is Persantine, can increase AZT’s effectiveness in combating the AIDS virus “five- to tenfold” in test-tube experiments with cultured cells.

Weinstein was part of a National Institutes of Health team that conducted the research, published last week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.