{"id":4920,"date":"2001-11-02T15:15:53","date_gmt":"2001-11-02T14:15:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/moomango.co.uk\/htb\/4920"},"modified":"2014-06-11T14:03:18","modified_gmt":"2014-06-11T14:03:18","slug":"nerve-growth-factor-improves-hiv-associated-sensory-neuropathy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/htb\/4920","title":{"rendered":"Nerve growth factor improves HIV-associated sensory neuropathy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Nerve growth factor (NGF) significantly improves the pain symptoms of HIV-infected patients with sensory neuropathy, according to a report in the October 9th issue of Neurology.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The sensory neuropathy that affects as many as 35% of AIDS patients predominantly affects small-fibre sensory nerves, the activity of which is modulated to some degree by NGF, the authors explain.<\/p>\n<p>Dr. Giovanni Schifitto, from the University of Rochester, New York, and colleagues studied the safety and effectiveness of recombinant human NGF for HIV-associated distal sensory polyneuropathy in 200 affected subjects.<\/p>\n<p>Pain scores improved consistently in all patient groups (that is, patients receiving either 0.1 \u00b5g NGF per kg or 0.3 \u00b5g NGF per kg), with the higher-dose groups experiencing less pain and greater improvements than the lower-dose groups, the authors report.<\/p>\n<p>Though there were trends towards improvement in cooling and vibratory sensation, the report indicates that only the higher-dose patients showed significantly improved pin sensitivity.<\/p>\n<p>Thirty-four moderate or severe adverse events included 28 complaints of injection site discomfort, two cases of diarrhoea, and one report each of rash\/urticaria, fatigue, impaired balance, and cough.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Both the double-blind study and this open-label follow-up show symptomatic improvement in patients treated with NGF,&#8221; Dr. Schifitto said. &#8220;A phase III study in HIV sensory neuropathy would be needed to clearly define the efficacy of NGF in this population.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Dr. Schifitto said that as far as he knows, South San Francisco, California-based biotechnology company Genentech Inc. &#8220;shelved NGF after the negative results of the diabetic neuropathy study.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The response to NGF in diabetic sensory neuropathy and HIV-associated sensory neuropathy are not necessarily comparable, because the pathological mechanisms involved may differ,&#8221; he said. &#8220;Therefore, the negative results of the phase III diabetic neuropathy study should not be extrapolated to HIV sensory neuropathy.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Reference:<\/p>\n<p>Neurology 2001;57:1313-1316.<\/p>\n<p>Source: Reuters Health<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Nerve growth factor (NGF) significantly improves the pain symptoms of HIV-infected patients with sensory neuropathy, according to a report in the October 9th issue of Neurology. The sensory neuropathy that affects as many as 35% of AIDS patients predominantly affects &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4920","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-side-effects","category-opportunistic-infections-coinfections-and-complications"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/htb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4920","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/htb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/htb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/htb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/htb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4920"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/htb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4920\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/htb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4920"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/htb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4920"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/htb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4920"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}