HIV/AIDS and IPT

HIV/AIDS and IPT

HIV/AIDS is causing unbelievable devastation in parts of Africa and southeast Asia. And it is merely a horrible plague in the rest of the world. 35 million people are infected, most in poor countries. Vaccines are hoped for, but are still but dreams. The HIV virus evolves rapidly, so drug resistance is a growing problem. Multi-drug antiviral cocktails work successfully for years for many people who can afford them. But they are very expensive, can be very toxic in the long run, taking them is a complex and inconvenient daily ordeal, and after a few years of use they may become ineffective or intolerable for any one patient.

The experts agree: new treatment strategies are needed. They worry that if no new therapeutic breakthroughs appear, and when current drugs fail, there will be nothing left. A.S.Fauci, director of NIH's National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, in 1999 spoke of "the pressing need to develop more effective, less toxic medications."

But what if there were already a simple, safe, inexpensive protocol available that uses existing antiviral drugs and makes them more effective in smaller, less toxic doses? Wouldn't they want to know about it?

Well, there is such a protocol. Insulin potentiation therapy (IPT). It is simply a better way of using the drugs that already exist. Early testing for treatment of HIV/AIDS showed amazing results. And we have been trying to tell the world about this option for more than a decade. So far no one, no lab, doctor, company, government, or foundation has picked up this idea and tried it again. With publicity, I hope this will change.

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L to R: First IPT AIDS patient, Dr. Perez Garcia
y Bellon 2, Dr. Perez Garcia 3.

L to R: First IPT AIDS patient, Dr. Perez Garcia 3.

In the late 1980s, two HIV/AIDS patients presented themselves to Drs. Perez Garcia 2 and 3, seeking IPT treatment. The antiviral drug used was Ribavirin, and, as usual, other medications were used to treat various symptoms. In both cases, remarkable improvements were obtained, as most or all symptoms rapidly went away. Not only was the immune system restored to more normal levels, but the secondary infections and symptoms were successfully treated as part of the protocol.

In the first case, swollen lymph nodes, fever, and herpes zoster infection all went away, and the patient regained weight he had lost. In the second case, severe dementia gave way to normal consciousness, and HIV blood tests turned negative.

The best description of these two cases that I have, complete with a list of medications used, is in an unpublished article, IPT and the treatment of HIV infection: clinical experience to date. SGA, M.D., Donato Perez Garcia y Bellon, M.D., Donato Perez Garcia, Jr., M.D., 1987. The first case is also reported as a case of AIDS with herpes zoster in the 1990 patent.

Dr. SGA hypothesized that HIV infections come back after treatment with antiviral drugs because the virus hides in, and reemerges from, the central nervous system (CNS), where the drugs cannot easily penetrate. He called this the autoreinfection hypothesis. He further proposed that IPT's effectiveness is due to its increased transport of antiviral drugs across the blood-brain barrier. And he did an experiment with rats and AZT that appeared to confirm this.

Here, World, is a clue that IPT may be very effective for treating HIV/AIDS. Yes, research is needed. But the most effective research would be for enterprising doctors who have a lot of AIDS patients to offer them the chance to try this therapy for a few weeks. There are no legal barriers in the US, as all the medications used are standard medications. It is a gentle and safe treatment method that can be tried with little risk. If it works, wonderful. If it doesn't, then standard treatment can be resumed.

In the late 1980s, I traveled to San Francisco and tried to get patients and doctors interested in trying IPT for treatment of AIDS. There were too many barriers to overcome, and no one took enough interest to try it. I am sure that many or most of the people I talked with then have died since. I hope the time has come for this long-neglected treatment option to finally be investigated. With all the millions of dollars spent so far, IPT has still not been studied.

Possibilities:

November 3, 2000. In the news today is the finding, just published in the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology by Paul E Klotman et al, that HIV definitely hides out in the kidneys, particularly in African Americans, even during antiretroviral treatment. My suggestion is to try IPT as a means to more effectively deliver the antiviral drugs to the kidneys. IPT has been reported to boost delivery and effectiveness of drugs in other compartments of the body, including the brain, so it is likely to work for the kidneys as well.

From the above two AIDS cases, and from other IPT cases, we can hypothesize that:

1. IPT could potentiate antiviral drugs such as Ribavirin, allowing more effectiveness at the same or smaller dose, with less toxicity.

2. IPT could enhance delivery of antiviral drugs across the blood-brain barrier, and into other parts of the body, such as the kidneys, thereby helping to eradicate hidden infection reservoirs.

3. IPT could rapidly and effectively treat opportunistic secondary infections (bacterial, viral, or parasitic). IPT has been demonstrated to increase the effectiveness of drugs for treating many types of infections. And an IPT treatment typically includes a variety of drugs simultaneously.

4. IPT could help return blood chemistry to normal, and help the body absorb nutrients given during IPT.

5. Wasting is a serious problem for many HIV/AIDS patients. IPT could help patients who have lost a lot of weight to regain it. In many settings, it has been shown that extra insulin makes patients get very hungry. When they eat in this hypoglycemic state, they absorb the nutrients more effectively. See Kabadi UM et al, AIDS Patient Care STDS 2000 Nov;14(11):575-9, "Weight gain, improvement in metabolic profile, and CD4 count with insulin administration in an AIDS patient," for a report of weight gain with daily subcutaneous insulin administration, which supports the idea that IPT could help patients gain weight, while simultaneously fighting infection.

6. IPT may offer an alternative to the current multi-drug mixtures which are prolonging life, but require constant, very expensive dosing over a long time, often with side effects, and with the risk of only working for a few years, as drug resistance and patient sensitivity increase. IPT might make it possible for patients to live with just occasional scheduled treatments, rather than having to take drugs daily without fail.

7. IPT, by eliminating HIV infection more quickly and more completely, may reduce the pressures for evolution of drug resistance, in individuals and human populations.

AIDS Treatment in Developing Regions: Parts of Africa and southeast Asia are experiencing a devastating epidemic of HIV/AIDS. There die the bulk of the 2.6 million who die of AIDS each year. In some of the countries, an estimated 50 percent of the population may be infected. I think it is time for doctors in these areas to try IPT, with training from current IPT doctors, to see if it works in other patients as well as it did for the first two, reported here. Standard treatment with antiviral drugs is just too expensive for most people in these regions. An effective AIDS vaccine is still a dream. Perhaps IPT will allow for more effective treatment with smaller doses of antiviral drugs, plus better treatment of opportunistic infections. If so, the benefits for millions of patients will be incalculable.
Let's try it.

HIV/AIDS articles available on IPTQ:

New Approaches to the Delivery of Drugs to the Brain. SGA. Medical Hypotheses 29:283-291, 1989.

Blood-brain barrier passage of azidothymidine in rats: effects of insulin. SGA, Brian Skaletski, and Aron D. Mosnaim. Res Commun Chem Pathol Pharmacol. 1989 Jan;63(1):45-52.

Insulin potentiation therapy and the auto-reinfection hypothesis of HIV-related disease. SGA, unpublished paper. 1987.

Insulin potentiation therapy and the treatment of the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome. SGA, M.D., unpublished article, 1987.

IPT and the treatment of HIV infection: clinical experience to date. SGA, M.D., Donato Perez Garcia y Bellon, M.D., Donato Perez Garcia, Jr., M.D. Unpublished article, 1987.