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A once-daily anti-AIDS treatment, the first of its kind, has been jointly developed by multinational drug firms Gilead and Bristol-Myers Squibb, and could soon outrun current three- times-a-day regimens.
According to research published in the latest New England Journal of Medicine, the manufacturers found the new three-in-one drug especially effective in suppressing HIV viral loads and had fewer side effects than commonly used antiretrovirals.
"I think it's a huge thing these companies are going to do ... with the right price in developing countries, the pill could become the main treatment for HIV in the world," Nelson Vergel, a US-based AIDS treatment activist, told the Washington Post.
Gilead and Bristol-Myers Squibb hope to obtain US and European approval of the pill by the end of 2006.
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