AIDS Daily Summary July 1, 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 ****************************************************** "U.N. Report: Human Index Ratings" "Health Officials Stalking Source of Intestinal Illness Outbreak" "Cradle of AIDS Still Its Worst Victim" "CDC Turns 50 Amid Growing Public Health Worries" "Immune System Drug Helps AIDS Patients - Study" "One Quarter of Nairobi Women Are HIV Carriers" "G7, Russia Vow to Fight AIDS, Other Diseases" "A.M.A. Delays Drug Report in Dispute Over Its Findings" "Fusin--a Place for HIV-1 and T4 Cells to Meet" "NIH Bucks Political Trend to Win Increased Funds From Congress" ****************************************************** "U.N. Report: Human Index Ratings" Washington Times (07/01/96) P. A10; Toups, Catherine The HIV epidemic has become so widespread that it has for the first time affected the ratings of dozens of countries in the "Human Development Index," a measure of the world's livability in the U.N. Development Program's annual Human Development Report. The annual report, to be released July 17, orders countries by their level of life expectancy, educational attainment, and basic purchasing power. Some countries' standings have been seriously affected by HIV and AIDS. Certain developing countries have even lost a decade of progress due to the disease, the report says. "Health Officials Stalking Source of Intestinal Illness Outbreak" Washington Post (07/01/96) P. A1; Schwartz, John Public health officials are trying to track down the source of an outbreak of a gastrointestinal infection that has caused diarrhea and other symptoms in hundreds of people in perhaps 12 states and the District of Columbia. The culprit, Cyclospora cayetanensis, was first identified in 1977 and has caused three previous outbreaks since 1990. Officials suspect the disease is linked to contaminated fruit. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Friday that "fresh fruit--raspberries and mixtures of berries and other fruits" could be associated with the microbe. The agency recommends that all fruit be washed before it is eaten. "Cradle of AIDS Still Its Worst Victim" Reuters (07/01/96); Fox, Maggie In Africa, the cradle of AIDS, the epidemic has affected more people than in any other region. The Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS reported that over 90 percent of all adults with HIV or AIDS live in developing countries. More than 13 million adults in sub-Saharan Africa are infected, and more than half of them are women. More than 25 percent of infected women will infect their children. The agency said that HIV probably started spreading in the region in the mid to late 1970s, before people recognized the problem. In Uganda, Tanzania, and Zambia, officials say the prevalence of HIV is starting to level off and decline. More people are waiting to have sex, decreasing their number of partners, and using condoms. About 20 percent of all HIV infections are in Asia, and India has more infections than any country in the world. Almost two percent of Bombay's 13 million people are HIV-positive. An aggressive education campaign may be helping to curb the spread of HIV in Thailand, where just over 2 percent of adults are infected. "CDC Turns 50 Amid Growing Public Health Worries" Reuters (06/30/96); Morgan, David As the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention celebrates 50 years of combating disease today, agency officials are concerned that the organization may not be as prepared for fighting infections as it was when founded. While the agency was able to control diseases with vaccines in the 1940s and 1950s, the emergence of new infectious diseases and the re-emergence of old ones has threatened public health. Among the diseases the CDC is working to control are AIDS, hantavirus, salmonella, and Lyme disease. Jim Hughes, director of the CDC's National Center for Infectious Diseases, said that "public health departments are less prepared to confront those threats today then they were 50 years ago." Federal health officials have requested $125 million a year for a plan to establish adequate public health facilities across the country. "Immune System Drug Helps AIDS Patients - Study" Reuters (06/27/96) Neupogen, a new immunity-boosting drug from Amgen, was recently approved for use by AIDS patients in Britain. The drug increases the number of neutrophils, or white blood cells, in the body, and has been used to treat neutropenia, a failure of the immune system that makes AIDS patients more vulnerable to infection. Mark Nelson, of London's Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, said Neupogen could improve AIDS patients' health and survival by staving off infection. Philip Keiser, director of HIV services at the University of Texas in Dallas, said HIV patients with neutropenia who were given the drug had one-quarter the bacterial infections of patients who were not treated. "One Quarter of Nairobi Women Are HIV Carriers" Xinhua News Agency (06/29/96) One quarter of women attending antenatal clinics in Nairobi are infected with HIV, the United States Agency for International Development reported. Early in 1995, 3.5 percent of all Kenyans were infected, agency official Gray Newton said. This figure rose to 7.5 percent by the end of the year. Newton asked the Kenyan government for money to help manage the AIDS epidemic. "G7, Russia Vow to Fight AIDS, Other Diseases" Reuters (06/29/96) Leaders of the Group of Seven industrial nations pledged Saturday to pursue national research and promote international scientific cooperation to prevent and control AIDS and other infectious diseases. The United States, Japan, Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Italy, and Canada, joined by Russia for the political part of their annual summit, said they would maintain assistance programs for countries hit hardest by infectious diseases. "A.M.A. Delays Drug Report in Dispute Over Its Findings" New York Times (06/23/96); Wren, Christopher S. A draft report commissioned by an American Medical Association committee that recommended legalizing marijuana has been shelved due to objections from other medical groups and doctors within the AMA. The report, commissioned to evaluate ways to reduce the harm drugs cause, suggests allowing addicts to refuse treatment, dropping criminal charges for using illegal drugs, and devising a way to sell marijuana over the counter. John Morgan, a professor of pharmacology at the City University of New York Medical School, said AMA officials had asked him to prepare a report on harm reduction, which he interpreted as helping drug abusers minimize the danger to themselves without demanding that they stop using drugs. "Fusin--a Place for HIV-1 and T4 Cells to Meet" Nature Medicine (06/96) Vol. 2, No. 6, P. 640; Dimitrov, Dimiter S. Fusin, the recently identified human specific cofactor for HIV-1, is critical to the virus' entry to human cells. Its discovery provides insight to how viruses infect the body and how antiviral drugs should be designed to fight infection. Drugs targeted against fusin might include molecules that mimic fusin or those which specifically bind to sites where fusin interacts with the HIV-1 envelope. A drug targeting fusin might also be less vulnerable to drug resistance than current antiviral therapies, and the discovery of fusin raises hopes for vaccine development. The history of AIDS research, with its great discoveries and disappointments, teaches researchers to be cautious when applying new findings. To that end, fusin's structure is as yet unknown and may not be appropriate for antiviral activity. "NIH Bucks Political Trend to Win Increased Funds From Congress" Nature (06/20/96) Vol. 381, No. 6584, P. 633; Wadman, Meredith A House of Representatives subcommittee has voted that the Office of AIDS Research (OAR) should not have the power to distribute the National Institutes of Health's AIDS research budget to the 24 institutes. The House Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education defeated an attempt by Democratic lawmakers to return AIDS spending authority to the OAR. Although a 1993 law gave the OAR authority over AIDS spending, Republicans took that power away in the 1996 spending bill. Treatment Action Group's Mark Harrington criticizes the committee's decision, saying the OAR's spending authority had become a "political football." He notes that in March, an 118-member expert panel had recommended that the OAR be given responsibility for AIDS spending. Other AIDS activists say that further recommendations in the report will be difficult to implement if the committee's decision stands.