                     AIDS Daily Summary 
                      April 18, 1996
     
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) National AIDS 
Clearinghouse makes available the following information as a public
service only. Providing this information does not constitute 
endorsement by the CDC, the CDC National AIDS Clearinghouse, or any
other organization. Reproduction of this text is encouraged;
however, copies may not be sold, and the CDC National AIDS
Clearinghouse should be cited as the source of this information.
Copyright 1996, Information, Inc., Bethesda, MD
     
     
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"Insurance Payout for Man Who Hid HIV"
"Amgen Says Net Climbed 32%; New Product Set" 
"China to Define Quarantine Zone"
"Three Drugs Better Than One or Two in AIDS Fight" 
"Engineered AIDS Vaccine Not Effective--U.S. Study" 
"Cytokines May Play Clinical Role in HIV Infection" 
"Zimbabwean Traditions Blamed for Spreading AIDS"
"Transmission of Multidrug-Resistant Mycobacterium Tuberculosis 
During a Long Airplane Flight"
"HIV-1 Nef Structure May Help in Drug Design" 
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"Insurance Payout for Man Who Hid HIV" 
Financial Times (04/18/96) P. 3;  Jack, Andrew
     A French insurance company has agreed to repay the balance of
a housing loan to the family of a man who died of an AIDS-related 
illness and who had not told insurers he was HIV-positive.  A 
court ruled in favor of the family, ordering the insurance 
company to repay the family the $17,716 it had demanded from them 
after the man's death.  Although the company argued that the man 
had made a false medical declaration, the family said he was 
truthful when he responded to a questionnaire that he was not ill 
with AIDS and was not receiving any treatment.
     
"Amgen Says Net Climbed 32%; New Product Set"
Wall Street Journal (04/18/96) P. B6;  Rundle, Rhonda L.
     Amgen reported a 32 percent increase in first-quarter net
income and announced a new product candidate as well as the filing 
of an application for an experimental hepatitis C drug.  The new 
product is a protein that stimulates the growth of red blood 
cells, and the company says it may be better than Amgen's 
successful Epogen.  The company filed a new drug application with 
the Food and Drug Administration on April 10 for Infergen, a 
consensus interferon to treat hepatitis C.  Analysts are dubious 
about Infergen's potential, because the drug's human test results 
have not shown a clear superiority over other interferons.
     
"China to Define Quarantine Zone"
Boston Globe (04/17/96) P. 17
     The Chinese province of Yunnan will establish quarantine 
checkpoints along its borders with Vietnam, Laos, and Burma to 
prevent the rapid spread of HIV and other diseases.  Drug use 
along the 2,500-mile border has contributed to the spread of HIV 
into the country.  Almost three-quarters of China's known AIDS 
patients are in Yunnan.  The government will spend $58 million to 
set up the checkpoints.
     
"Three Drugs Better Than One or Two in AIDS Fight" 
Reuters (04/17/96);  Gevirtz, Leslie
     Treatment with three drugs is more effective against HIV than
any combination of just two, according to a study in today's issue 
of the New England Journal of Medicine.  The study, conducted by 
the AIDS Clinical Trials Group, found that the combination of 
Hoffmann-LaRoche's saquinavir (Invirase) and zalcitabine (ddC) 
along with Glaxo-Wellcome's AZT, was most effective in reducing 
HIV's ability to replicate.  The drug combination was compared to 
that of either saquinavir or zalcitabine with AZT.  The 
treatments were tolerated equally well, researcher Ann Collier of 
the University of Washington reported.
     
"Engineered AIDS Vaccine Not Effective--U.S. Study" 
Reuters (04/17/96);  Aldinger, Charles
     A genetically engineered AIDS vaccine was found to be
ineffective in helping to stop progression of the disease, U.S. 
military researchers reported Wednesday.  The five-year clinical 
study of Microgenesys' vaccine gp160 was conducted by scientists 
from the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research with the National 
Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and civilian medical 
centers.  The study tested the vaccine in more than 600 military 
and civilian volunteers with early HIV infections and found that 
no clinical improvement could be attributed to the treatment.  
The research is considered the first successful HIV vaccine 
therapy trial ever performed with a vaccine engineered in a 
laboratory because it showed that such interagency studies could 
be conducted among volunteers in the early stages of HIV 
infection.
     
"Cytokines May Play Clinical Role in HIV Infection" 
Reuters (04/17/96)
     New research has found that cytokines may play a clinical role
in modulating cytokine-associated symptoms in the early phases of 
HIV infection.  Previous studies have implicated the cytokines 
interleukin-1-beta and tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-alpha) 
with fever, cachexia, and inflammation in animals and humans.  
Donald M. Thea of the New England Medical Center in Boston and 
colleagues evaluated HIV-positive women treated at a clinic in 
Zaire.  The researchers were surprised to find that the levels of 
several cytokines differed for women who had AIDS, compared to 
those who were asymptomatic and those who were HIV-negative.  Only 
the asymptomatic HIV-positive women had high levels of 
interleukin-1 beta and TNF-alpha.  Most of the women with AIDS did 
not have these cytokines.  Thea suggests that this finding could 
be a "result of late-stage debilitation and a limited capacity to 
synthesize new proteins, including cytokines."
     
"Zimbabwean Traditions Blamed for Spreading AIDS" 
PANA News Service (04/17/96);  Jonhera, Tambudzai
     Traditional marriage and sexual practices in Zimbabwe have
been blamed for helping to increase the number of HIV infections in
the country to beyond 1 million.  Health experts have pointed to 
polygamous marriages, the inheritance of widows by brothers after 
their husbands die of AIDS, and the practice of men having 
children with their wives' relatives if the wives are barren.  
There are an estimated 150,000 AIDS cases in the country, and 
more than 1 million people are infected with HIV.  Women are put 
at high risk by the traditions, which make them vulnerable to 
men.  Some beliefs, like women being barren if they have secret 
affairs, help control the spread of disease.  The emergence of 
sex as a human rights issue, however, has resulted in most young 
women indulging in pre-marital sex.
     
"Transmission of Multidrug-Resistant Mycobacterium Tuberculosis 
During a Long Airplane Flight"
New England Journal of Medicine (04/11/96) Vol. 334, No. 15, P. 
933;  Kenyon, Thomas A.;  Valway, Sarah E.;  Ihle, Walter W.; et 
al.
     In April 1994, a commercial-airline passenger with infectious 
multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (TB) traveled from Honolulu to 
Chicago and from Chicago to Baltimore, and returned in May. To 
determine if the woman had infected any of the people she 
contacted on the trip, Dr. Thomas A. Kenyon and colleagues from 
the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention identified the 
passengers and crew of the planes from airline records.  U.S. 
residents who were notifiable were informed of their exposure, 
asked to complete a questionnaire, and screened with tuberculin 
skin tests.  The 11 people from the pertinent April flights who 
tested positive to the skin test were found to have other risk 
factors for TB, as did two of three people with positive tests 
who were on the Baltimore to Chicago flight in May.  More people 
on the final, 8.75 hour flight from Chicago to Honolulu had 
positive skin tests than those on the other three flights.  Among 
the 15 people from this flight who tested positive, six 
individuals had no risk factors except for the fact that they sat 
in the same section of the plane as the infected woman.  
Passengers sitting within two rows of her were more likely to 
have positive tests than those in other rows in the section.
     
"HIV-1 Nef Structure May Help in Drug Design" 
Lancet (04/13/96) Vol. 347, No. 9007, P. 1032
     The structure of Nef, an accessory protein in HIV-1, has
recently been described and appears to be essential for the virus' 
pathogenicity, like other such proteins.  In infected cells, Nef 
downregulates CD4, the receptor for HIV-1, preventing 
superinfection of cells and premature lysis, thereby allowing 
maximum viral activity.  Nef also enhances virus infectivity in 
quiescent cells, possibly helping to activate normally quiescent 
CD4-bearing lymphocytes through cellular signaling systems.  Nef 
binds to the signaling molecules Hck and Lyn through the src 
homology three (SH3) domain, which is thought to be involved in 
protein-protein interactions necessary for signal transduction.  
Stephan Grzesiek and colleagues report that Nef's binding site 
for the SH3 domain of Hck uniquely consists of non-contiguous 
amino acids.  These findings may be helpful in rational drug 
design targeted at blocking the interaction between Nef and Hck 
without inhibiting cellular SH3-target interactions for normal 
signal transduction.
     
     
     
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