Compliance with Zidovudine Therapy

Excerpt

To the Editors: Recent articles (1, 2) and Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recommendations suggesting that zidovudine be used for treatment of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-infected persons with no or early symptoms fail to consider patient compliance. How do we get expensive multidose daily "preventive" medication into so many less symptomatic patients for an indefinite period? Such an activity has never before been tried on such a scale and, when done in far fewer subjects, has usually failed. Researchers and the FDA appear to assume that, despite being asymptomatic, most HIV-infected patients will take their zidovudine as prescribed without specific