                     AIDS Daily Summary 
                        July 9, 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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"3-Drug Combination Appears to Lessen HIV"
"Studies Show Even Stronger AIDS Drugs" 
"AIDS Numbers Hold Steady"
"At AIDS Meeting, Experts Find an Uneasy Mix of Hope and Fear" 
"Panel Calls Clinton 'Timid' on Needle Swaps for AIDS"
"AIDS Spreads Among Young Gays Despite Warnings" 
"In City, Female Condom Proves Highly Popular" 
"AIDS Patient, 3, Dies"
"The Changing of the Guard"
"Vaculoar Myelopathy in Transgenic Mice Expressing Human 
Immunodeficiency Virus Type 1 Proteins Under the Regulation of 
the Myelin Basic Protein Gene Promoter" 
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"3-Drug Combination Appears to Lessen HIV" 
Washington Post (07/09/96) P. A3; Brown, David
     A three-drug combination can reduce the level of HIV in
patients to undetectable levels for more than a year, months 
longer than previous studies had shown, researchers reported 
Monday at the 11th International Conference on AIDS.  In the 
clinical trial, compliance with medical instructions was very 
high, but researchers warn that the efficacy of the therapy might 
not be as good in a larger population.  One trial tested the 
combination of two older drugs, AZT and ddI, with the new drug 
nevirapine, and the therapy was found to reduce 75 percent of the 
patients' HIV load to undetectable levels even after a year.  One 
issue that is now being debated is whether to start patients on 
two- or three-drug combinations of the older drugs or to begin 
treatment with a triple therapy of the new, more powerful 
protease inhibitors.
     
"Studies Show Even Stronger AIDS Drugs"
Wall Street Journal (07/09/96) P. A3; Tanouye, Elyse
     Researchers at the 11th International Conference on AIDS in 
Vancouver unveiled studies on Monday demonstrating the potency of 
several experimental drugs against HIV.  The new research 
suggests that the experimental compounds may perform as well as 
protease inhibitors by attacking the virus at different points.  
Glaxo Wellcome's 1592U89, which is chemically similar to AZT, was 
able to reduce virus levels in the blood nearly as much as 
protease inhibitors, said Michael Saag, director of the AIDS 
outpatient clinic at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and 
the lead researcher in a trial of the drug.  Boehringer 
Ingelheim's nevirapine was also described as promising.
     
"AIDS Numbers Hold Steady"
Washington Post--Health (07/09/96) P. 7; Russell, Cristine
     While an estimated 450,000 Americans were infected with HIV
in 1984, the number is now thought to have stabilized between 
650,000 and 900,000, researchers at the Centers for Disease 
Control and Prevention and the National Cancer Institute reported 
Saturday.  The scientists found a marked variation in sex, race, 
region, and risk group.  The report said that in 1992, while the 
rate of infections grew faster in women than in men, there were 
still far more men infected than women.  In blacks, the overall 
rate of HIV infection was about six times greater than the rate 
in whites and twice that for Hispanics.  CDC statistician John M. 
Karon led the study, to be published in Wednesday's issue of the 
Journal of the American Medical Association, and noted that some 
55,000 Americans died from AIDS in 1994.  The data suggest that 
the number of people infected with HIV has stabilized because the 
number of new infections each year is now about the same as the 
number of AIDS deaths.  Karon also reported that the number of 
Americans infected with HIV as a result of heterosexual contact 
more than tripled between 1986 and 1992, to about 15 percent of 
the total.  About two-thirds of that figure, some 100,000 
persons, are women.
     
"At AIDS Meeting, Experts Find an Uneasy Mix of Hope and Fear" 
New York Times (07/09/96) P. C5; Altman, Lawrence K.
     While many leading AIDS researchers are hailing the positive
results of drug trials this week at the 11th International 
Conference on AIDS, some physicians who treat AIDS patients are 
upset by the publicity the studies have generated.  Harvey J. 
Makadon of Beth Israel Hospital in Boston said the results of the 
latest trials were too preliminary for the highly favorable 
reports.  Makadon claimed that scientists had generated the 
publicity in hopes of renewing their grants.  Moreover, the 
meeting's daily paper reported that many AIDS researchers were 
nervous about losing financial support for AIDS if it became 
treatable like other chronic diseases.  The apparent advances in 
HIV treatment have also come too fast for therapy recommendations 
to be updated.  More research is needed to determine which drugs 
are most effective, who should receive them, and when treatment 
should begin.
     
"Panel Calls Clinton 'Timid' on Needle Swaps for AIDS" 
Wall Street Journal (07/09/96) P. A4
     The Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS has issued a
report in which it calls the Clinton administration "timid" for 
failing to support needle-exchange programs.  However, the panel, 
40 percent of which is HIV-positive, also praised Clinton for his 
commitment to AIDS research and urged the administration to 
eliminate mandatory HIV testing in the military, the State 
Department, and the foreign service.  The report concluded that 
the federal government's failure to support needle exchange 
programs is "not consistent with current knowledge regarding the 
impact of such programs on HIV prevention."
     
"AIDS Spreads Among Young Gays Despite Warnings" 
USA Today (07/09/96) P. 1D; Painter, Kim
     Despite 15 years of prevention efforts, young gay men in the
United States and other Western countries continue to become 
infected with HIV in high numbers.  "The figures are high, very 
high, especially if we consider that these young men have become 
sexually active in an era in which massive effort was exerted to 
increase awareness of HIV-risk behaviors and to promote safer 
sex," said John deWit of the University of Utrecht in the 
Netherlands.  In San Francisco, 18 percent of gay men ages 18 to 
29 are HIV-positive.  Among a sample of mostly white gay college 
students in Boston, 30 percent reported having anal sex without a 
condom, as did 44 percent of the San Francisco men under 30.
     
"In City, Female Condom Proves Highly Popular" 
Philadelphia Inquirer (07/09/96) P. A1; Collins, Huntly
     The female condom was found to be extremely popular among
the low-income minority women who are at highest risk for HIV, 
Philadelphia epidemiologist Erica L. Golub reported Monday at the 
11th International Conference on AIDS.  The study found that 
having access to the female condom increased the use of 
protection by the 2,000 women, most of them African-Americans, 
who were treated for sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) at one 
of the city's public health clinics.  The women were given 
information about different types of STD protection, including 
the male condom, the female condom, and other less effective 
methods.  For the women who were given a choice between the male 
condom and other methods, the female condom was the most popular. 
 Four months into the study, the women reported using protection 
80 to 90 percent of the time, up from one-third of the time at 
the beginning of the study.
     
"AIDS Patient, 3, Dies"
Washington Post (07/09/96) P. B8
     A 3-year-old Maryland girl with AIDS, whose mother hid her
from health care workers and failed to take her to appointments 
at the University of Maryland Medical Center's pediatric AIDS 
clinic, died Saturday at a Baltimore hospital.  A court had 
issued a "do not resuscitate" order for the child.
     
"The Changing of the Guard"
Science (06/28/96) Vol. 272, No. 5270; P. 1876; Cohen, Jon
     The culture of AIDS research has changed since the disease
was first identified 15 years ago, when scientists working on HIV 
and AIDS were tumor virologists rather than strictly AIDS experts. 
 Members of the new group of AIDS scientists grew up together, 
observing the intense competition between their predecessors while 
learning the benefits of cooperation.  Richard Koup, 39, an 
immunologist at the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center (ADARC) 
says, "It's really quite amazing how little real fighting or 
hatred there is, which distinguishes this era from the previous 
one."  This younger generation is driving current AIDS research, 
and it is helping to shape the politics of the AIDS program.  This 
change in personnel reflects the growth in the field itself, with 
more people making contributions and less emphasis put on major 
discoveries.  Two institutions, the ADARC and the University of 
Alabama, Birmingham, have rapidly become strong forces in AIDS 
research, hosting six of the 15 most-cited authors of AIDS papers 
between 1993 and 1995.
     
"Vaculoar Myelopathy in Transgenic Mice Expressing Human 
Immunodeficiency Virus Type 1 Proteins Under the Regulation of 
the Myelin Basic Protein Gene Promoter"
Nature Medicine (06/96) Vol. 2, No. 6, P. 655; Goudreau, Guy; 
Carpenter, Stirling; Beaulieu, Normand; et al.
     Vaculoar myelopathy, a common neurological complication in
AIDS patients, may be caused by infection of the spinal cord with 
HIV-1.  Oligodendrocytes, the central nervous system cells 
damaged in the disease, may be the target of the virus.  Paul 
Jolicoeur, of the Montreal Neurological Institute, and colleagues 
bred transgenic mice to determine whether the expression of HIV-1 
gene products in oligodendrocytes can have pathogenic effects.  
The mice developed spinal cord vacuolar lesions similar to those 
found in AIDS patients, proving that HIV-1 infection of 
oligodendrocytes is responsible for the spinal cord damage 
exhibited in vacuolar myelopathy.  The researchers say that the 
implications of their results for AIDS in humans are not clear.  
While they suggest that the vacuolar myelopathy seen in the 
transgenic mice is probably similar to the disease in humans, 
more study of human oligodendrocyte infection in AIDS patients is 
needed, they say.
     
     
