Jesuit's work in AIDS research combines his love for medicine, church

Published: 2005-01-10

WASHINGTON (CNS) -- For Jesuit Father Mike Vjecha, overseeing one of the largest AIDS studies ever conducted combines the best of his two worlds -- being a priest and a doctor. He is executive coordinator of the Strategies for Management of Anti-Retroviral Therapy Study, or SMART Study, which will track 6,000 infected patients over an eight- to nine-year period. Funded by the National Institutes of Health, the study is being conducted through the Community Programs for Clinical Research on AIDS, a community-based clinical trials network whose main goal is to obtain evidence to inform health care providers and people living with HIV about the most appropriate use of available therapies. "It's the largest randomized study in HIV treatment to date, the longest and most expensive HIV trial that NIH has ever funded," Father Vjecha told the National Jesuit News magazine in an interview in his office at the VA Medical Center in Washington. The study compares two strategies for treating people with HIV. Current treatment consists of suppressing the virus through a continuous supply of drugs. Another strategy is called "drug conservation," or giving drugs only intermittently. With this method, enough medication is given to prevent opportunistic infections but it is stopped when immune cell counts are at a high enough level.

Copyright (c) 2005 Catholic News Service /U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. The CNS news report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed, including but not limited to such means as framing or any other digital copying or distribution method, in whole or in part without the prior written authority of Catholic News Service .