Science / Medicine : Alpha Interferon Wins OK

The Food and Drug Administration last week approved alpha interferon as a treatment for Kaposi’s sarcoma, a cancer that primarily affects AIDS patients. Alpha interferon is a disease-fighter that is present in the body naturally in small amounts, but has been artificially produced in large quantities in recent years through the use of gene-splicing techniques. It previously had been approved for treatment of hairy-cell leukemia and for genital warts.

Kaposi’s sarcoma, named for a European doctor who first described it more than 100 years ago, was a rare cancer until the appearance early in this decade of AIDS, or acquired immune deficiency syndrome.

According to the FDA, several human studies showed that high doses of alpha inteferon would reduce Kaposi’s tumors in 40 to 45% of patients who were in early stages of the AIDS infection.