"People are under the impression that HIV is very manageable, but it's not," said Vokoun, a former corporate compensation analyst. "Now I see hope not only for me, but for a lot of other people."
Doctors know that any single experience can be a fluke. The drug, Isentress, has been tested for a brief time in just 800 people. And it is not even approved by the government, though that could happen soon.
Still, the drug is causing a stir in HIV circles. Experts say it is one of three experimental compounds - Pfizer Inc.'s Celsentri and Tibotec Inc.'s Etravirine are the others - that appear to help the sickest HIV patients, those with multiple drug resistance.
Two of those drugs - Isentress and Celsentri - could represent the first new classes of oral HIV drugs approved in more than a decade.
"It's a very exciting time for HIV therapeutics," said Pablo Tebas, a physician who directs the adult AIDS Clinical Trials Unit of the University of Pennsylvania. "We have more drugs than ever. We have new drugs in new classes. It has increased our armamentarium to treat patients."
"There really is a lot of optimism about this," added Murray Penner, deputy executive director for domestic programs at the National Alliance of State and Territorial AIDS Directors in Washington.
Penner's interest is more than professional. He learned he had HIV in 1986, and his HIV blood levels have recently kept spiking despite the meds he is taking. "I'm at the end of my rope," he said.
So he was planning to start on Isentress and Etravirine late last week.
Acquired immune deficiency syndrome, or AIDS, remains a fatal disease. The HIV virus, which is spread through sexual contact and infected needles, has led to the deaths of more than 25 million people worldwide since 1981 and currently infects about 40 million people.
In the United States, more than 550,000 have died, and about 1.2 million people are infected, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
