Long‐term administration of 3′‐Azido‐2′,3′‐dideoxythymidine to patients with AIDS‐related neurological disease

3′‐Azido‐2′,3′‐dideoxythymidine (AZT) has been administered to 7 patients with human immunodeficiency virus associated neurological disease: 3 with dementia, 2 with peripheral neuropathy, 1 with dementia and peripheral neuropathy, and 1 with T‐10 paraplegia. Six of the patients showed improvement in their neurological dysfunction on being administered AZT, as assessed by clinical evaluation, neuropsychological testing, nerve conduction studies, and/or positron emission tomographic scans. Three of these 6 patients showed sustained improvement 5 to 18 months after the initiation of AZT therapy. These results suggest that certain human immunodeficiency virus–associated neurological abnormalities are at least partially reversible following the administration of antiretroviral therapy and provide a rationale for further studies using antiretroviral chemotherapy.