WASHINGTON - The U.S. government has halted enrollment in a major international study of drug-conserving AIDS therapy, after patients trying the on-again, off-again medication strategy got sicker than those who never took a break from their HIV drugs. The study had enrolled more than 5,000 HIV patients in 33 countries, including the United States, when a routine safety analysis detected that patients being given AIDS medication only when their immune systems waned were more than twice as likely to have the disease progress as people who took those high-powered drugs continuously.
