AIDS Daily Summary February 3, 1995 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 Clearinghouse, or any other organization. Reproduction of this text is encouraged; however, copies may not be sold, and the CDC Clearinghouse should be cited as the source of this information. Copyright 1995, Information, Inc., Bethesda, MD ************************************************************ "AIDS Spreading More Slowly in U.S." "NIH Official Urges Shift in AIDS Policy to Scientist-Initiated Research" "Wellcome Increases Profits to 680 Million Pounds" "Vitamin A Deficiency Linked to Transmission of AIDS Virus from Mothers to Infants" "5 Charged with Smuggling Drugs to Puerto Rico" "No Vaccine for AIDS Seen Before 2000" "AIDS Dementia: The New Enemy" "U.S. Bioscience Submits Amended New Drug..." "HIV-Specific Cytotoxic T-Cells in HIV-Exposed but Uninfected Gambian Women" "Congress Deep-Sixes Gallo Report" ************************************************************ "AIDS Spreading More Slowly in U.S." Washington Times (02/03/95) P. A13 The AIDS epidemic is spreading at a slower rate than in previous years, said federal health officials on Thursday. A total of 441,528 cases of AIDS have been reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) since 1981, with 18 percent of those being reported in 1994. While the number of AIDS cases in the United States increased 73.7 percent from 1992 to 1994, much of the increase was due to the CDC's expansion of the definition of AIDS to include people with weakened immune systems, pulmonary tuberculosis, recurrent pneumonia, or invasive cervical cancer. Related Stories: New York Times (02/03) P. A17; Washington Post (02/03) P. A9 "NIH Official Urges Shift in AIDS Policy to Scientist-Initiated Research" Washington Post (02/03/95) P. A9; Brown, David William E. Paul, head of the Office of AIDS Research at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), wrote in Friday's issue of the journal Science that research money should be distributed more among individual scientists than committees. He also said that more money should be spent on laboratory research for improved AIDS treatments. Many activists contended that NIH should fund research that focused on specific questions and had a clear list of priorities. Others called for a program similar to the "Manhattan Project," which created the atomic bomb 50 years ago. Related Story: New York Times (02/03) P. A17; Philadelphia Inquirer (02/03) P. A3 "Wellcome Increases Profits to 680 Million Pounds" Financial Times (02/03/95) P. 21; Green, Daniel Wellcome has published its full-year results nearly a month ahead of schedule, hoping to attract bids to compete with Glaxo's. Total 1994 sales were 2.28 billion pounds, up from 2.05 billion pounds in 1993. Pre-tax profits were 680 million pounds, and earnings were 46.5p per share. While sales of the company's best-selling drug Zovirax--a herpes medication--rose 16 percent, sales of its number two product Retrovir (AZT), fell from 227 million pounds to 206 million pounds. Related Stories: Investor's Business Daily (02/03) P. A17; Washington Post (02/03) P. A2; New York Times (02/03) P. D5; Wall Street Journal (02/03) P. A8 "Vitamin A Deficiency Linked to Transmission of AIDS Virus from Mothers to Infants" New York Times (02/03/95) P. A17; Altman, Lawrence K. Researchers from the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and their colleagues in Malawi reported on Thursday that a link has been found between vitamin A deficiency and transmission of HIV from mother to infant. The report, which was presented at the closing session of a meeting sponsored by the American Society for Microbiology, is thought to be the first to show that maternal nutritional deficiencies can affect transmission of HIV, said Dr. Richard D. Semba of Johns Hopkins Hospital, the leader of the research team. Doctors and others have long called vitamin A "the anti-infective vitamin," and deficiency has been linked to many infectious diseases, including tuberculosis, ear infections, and malaria. Several studies in laboratories have shown that when deprived of vitamin A, T cells and B cells--two types of immune cells that are critically important in helping the body fight HIV--fail to function properly. Vitamin A deficiency can also lead to impaired production of cytokines, substances produced by cells that are important to immune reactions. Semba's team found the link in a study of 567 HIV-infected pregnant women in a hospital in Malawi. Of the infants born to mothers with the most severe deficiency, 93 percent died within the first year of life, compared to 14 percent of those born to mothers with healthy vitamin A levels. "5 Charged with Smuggling Drugs to Puerto Rico" New York Times (02/03/95) P. A15; Sullivan, Ronald Five people have been charged with smuggling drugs from New York to Puerto Rico. The federal drug indictment said that the five smuggled hundreds of pounds of Southeast Asian heroin to Puerto Rico from the mid-1980s through late 1992. Typically, Colombian drug cartels used Puerto Rico as a principal entry to the United States, said law-enforcement officials. As drug addiction has become an increasing problem in Puerto Rico, however, the New York-to-Puerto Rico route was established. Puerto Rico is one of the largest centers of drug addiction in the United States. Largely as a result, it has the third-highest rate of HIV infection, after the District of Columbia and New York state. "No Vaccine for AIDS Seen Before 2000" Boston Globe (02/02/95) P. 5; Knox, Richard A. On Wednesday, Dr. Margaret Johnston, the federal government's AIDS vaccine project director, warned not to expect the first large-scale human trials of a potential AIDS vaccine until at least 1998. The results, she said, would not be available until early in the next century. An effective AIDS vaccine will likely require scientists to insert several synthetic genes from HIV to a live, but weakened, virus of a different type. While only a live-virus vehicle could carry multiple AIDS genes, said Johnston, such a strategy requires caution because no one knows whether a live-virus vaccine would be safe for people with compromised immune systems. Another unknown is how to protect people from the broad range of HIV strains. "AIDS Dementia: The New Enemy" St. Louis Post-Dispatch (02/02/95) P. 1A; Signor, Roger AIDS dementia has emerged as a deadly foe in the battle against AIDS. While drugs help AIDS patients live longer, they also give HIV more time to invade the brain. Experts estimate that in the United States there will be 10,000 to 20,000 new cases of AIDS dementia each year. The costs for each patient will be $40,000 to $80,000 a year. Dr. David B. Clifford, a neurologist at Washington University, has persuaded the federal government to grant $1.5 million for nationwide research on AIDS dementia, which will be conducted by the Neurologic AIDS Research Consortium. The consortium will do clinical trials of drugs to reduce the impact of AIDS on the brain and nervous system. HIV has been found in the brains of almost all patients who die from AIDS. Approximately 20 percent of all AIDS patients develop dementia. The cause of AIDS dementia is not known. Researchers speculate, however, that the cause is not nerve damage by HIV, but may be a toxic effect triggered by HIV infection. AZT relieves symptoms of many dementia patients, said Clifford. His consortium is planning a trial of a drug, nimodipine, that keeps HIV from damaging nerve cells in test tube. The hope is that the effect will be identical for patients. "U.S. Bioscience Submits Amended New Drug..." Business Wire (02/02/95) U.S. Bioscience Inc. announced on Thursday that it has filed an amendment to its New Drug Application for Ethyol based on discussions with the FDA following the Oncology Drug Advisory Committee's Dec. 12 decision to withhold recommendation for approval The amendment asserts Ethyol's protective ability against cumulative renal and hematologic toxicities associated with cisplatin and cyclophosphamide. The company also reported that it has received a worldwide exclusive license to AIDS compounds FddA and Fddl from the Office of Technology Transfer of the National Institutes of Health. Both performed well in clinical testing. "HIV-Specific Cytotoxic T-Cells in HIV-Exposed but Uninfected Gambian Women" Nature Medicine (01/95) Vol. 1, No. 1, P. 59; Rowland-Jones, Sarah; Sutton, Julian; Ariyoshi, Koya et al. To develop a prophylactic vaccine against HIV, it is critical to establish whether or not protective immunity can occur following natural infection. The immune response to infection with HIV is characterized by extremely vigorous HIV-specific cytotoxic T-lymphocyte (CTL) activity. Researchers identified four HIV-1 and HIV-2 cross-reactive peptide epitopes, presented to CTL from HIV-infected Gambians by HLA-B35, the most common Gambian human leucocyte antigen (HLA) class I molecule. The peptides were used to elicit HIV-specific CTLs from three out of six frequently exposed, yet HIV-seronegative, female prostitutes with HLA-B35. The women continue to be seronegative with no evidence of HIV infection by polymerase chain reaction or viral culture. The findings suggest that CTL generation may be a key component of protective immunity against HIV and emphasize the importance of CTL induction in the design of HIV vaccines. "Congress Deep-Sixes Gallo Report" Science (01/20/95) Vol. 267, No. 5196, P. 319 As the Republicans have forced Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.) to give up his position as head of the House subcommittee that investigates scientific misconduct, it seems that Robert Gallo of the National Cancer Institute will be spared a final attack on his reputation. Dingell's staff had been preparing a report on Gallo and his lab's role in the discovery of HIV. Congressional staffers say, however, that the report will never be formally released because of the turnover in Congress and resulting changes in the House Commerce Committee. The Chicago Tribune reported that Dingell's staff had concluded in a draft that the federal government was involved in a "cover-up" to protect Gallo and the patent he shares with the government for the AIDS blood test. The Tribune noted that the draft did not resolve the issue of whether Gallo's lab had "misappropriated" the HIV it claimed to have discovered in 1984. The charge was first raised by the Pasteur Institute in France, which gave Gallo's lab HIV samples in 1983 that turned out to be identical to the ones used to make the blood test. Gallo maintains that the French samples contaminated his. Five years of intensive government scrutiny have found neither Gallo or others in his lab guilty of wrong-doing.