Many Attend HIV Protease Inhibitor Symposium
William J. Martone, MD, Senior Executive Director of the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases (NFID), recently served as Co-Chair of a symposium which followed the 3rd Conference on Human Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections. HIV Protease Inhibitors: When and How They Should Be Used was sponsored by The Thomas R. Beam, Jr., Memorial Institute for Continuing Medical Education in cooperation with NFID. The program was held in Washington, DC, on February 1. HIV Protease Inhibitors: When and How They Should Be Used was sponsored by the Thomas R. Beam, Jr., Memorial Institute for Continuing Medical Education in cooperation with NFID, and was made possible by an unrestricted educational grant from Merck and Co.
Topics presented at the symposium included an historical perspective and basic science of HIV protease inhibitors, their pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics, overview of resistance and cross-resistance, evaluation of plasma r-RNA as a surrogate marker in the treatment of HIV infection, and safety profile of inhibitors. The didactic program ended with a clinician's practice perspectives on the use of HIV protease inhibitors presented by Jay Dobkin, MD, Medical Director, AIDS Center, Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center, New York. A roundtable discussion followed the didactic program.
Dr. Martone, who co-chaired the session with John P. Phair, MD, Chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases, Northwestern University Medical School, believes that the topic was timely and appropriate for the audience, most of whom attended the Retrovirus Conference. "This was an important conference for those clinicians currently using or contemplating use of this exciting new class of anti-retroviral agents," he said.
Other faculty included Ann C. Collier, MD, Staff Investigator, Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center and Professor of Medicine, New York University School of Medicine, Charles W. Flexner, MD, Assistant Professor of Medicine, Clinical Pharmacology and Infectious Diseases and Molecular Science, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Martin H. Markowitz, MD, Staff Investigator, Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center and Assistant Professor of Medicine, New York University School of Medicine; and John Mellors, MD, Associate Professor of Medicine, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.
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