Date: Thu, 7 Sep 1995 09:33:30 +0500 From: ghmcleaf{CONTRACTOR/ASPEN/ghmcleaf}%NAC-GATEWAY.ASPEN@ace.aspensys.com Subject: CDC AIDS Daily Summary 09/07/95 AIDS Daily Summary September 7, 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 Strikes D.C. Latino Community" "Business Briefs: Cambridge Biotech Corp." "Study Finds Oral Version of Eye Drug Effective" "The Reliable Source: Friendly for Fisher" "Columbia Laboratories Files Investigational New Drug Application to Start U.S. Clinical Trials for Its AIDS Therapy Drug, SPC3" "Organiser Hopes AIDS Meet Will Show Thai Success" "New Global AIDS Programme Trying to Break with the Past" "Alternative Medicine and HIV/AIDS: Request for Applications" "Is Oral Sex Safer Sex? An AIDS Education Dilemma" "Women: Absent Term in the AIDS Research Equation" ************************************************************ "AIDS Strikes D.C. Latino Community" Washington Post (09/07/95) P. D.C.1; DeJesus, Ivelisse In Washington, D.C.'s immigrant Latino community, many of the people with AIDS do not fit the standard definitions of high-risk groups, but such obstacles as cultural barriers, language, and traditional sex roles put them at increased risk of HIV infection. According to health officials, this problem makes efforts to prevent and treat the virus in the community more difficult. A report from the city's Office on Latino Affairs found that 207 Latino immigrants in the Washington area--33 of whom were women--were known to have AIDS last year. However, Frank Yurrita, the Whitman-Walker Clinic's director of Latino services, claims the data are deceptive because they only reflect cases of full-blown AIDS and do not take into account widespread underreporting among Latinos. Still, Juan Romagoza, executive director of Clinica del Pueblo--the city's only comprehensive clinic for Latin immigrants--maintains that the number of cases is on the rise. Romagoza notes that while the clinic saw its first HIV-positive result in 1985, "today, it sees four to five positive tests per month." "Business Briefs: Cambridge Biotech Corp." Wall Street Journal (09/07/95) P. B4 The U.S. Bankruptcy Court has ruled that Cambridge Biotech Corp. did not violate two HIV-2 diagnostic test patents held by Institut Pasteur. Cambridge Biotech, however, said that it has been barred from manufacturing or selling an HIV-1 Western blot test because the court found that this product did, in fact, infringe on an Institut Pasteur patent. The court decision allows the company to proceed with its Chapter 11 reorganization efforts which began in July 1994. Cambridge Biotech was sued by Institut Pasteur and Genetic Systems in March 1995. "Study Finds Oral Version of Eye Drug Effective" Reuters (09/06/95) Oral ganciclovir is safe and effective, a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine concludes. Ganciclovir has been generally administered intravenously to AIDS patients in order to combat cytomegalovirus (CMV) retinitis. However, a team of researchers led by Lawrence Drew of the University of California at San Francisco discovered that ganciclovir capsules were almost as effective as the intravenous form of the drug and resulted in fewer complications. According to the study, once intravenous ganciclovir has stabilized the disease, most patients can then be switched to the oral version, which sells under Hoffmann LaRoche's brand name Cytovene. "The Reliable Source: Friendly for Fisher" Washington Post (09/07/95) P. D3; Groer, Annie; Gerhart, Ann House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) and Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) will host a reception for artist and AIDS activist Mary Fisher on Sept. 28. At the reception, Fisher--who made a stirring speech about being HIV-positive at the 1992 Republican convention--will display several of her works, including a brightly painted coffin covered with bleak headlines about AIDS. "Columbia Laboratories Files Investigational New Drug Application to Start U.S. Clinical Trials for Its AIDS Therapy Drug, SPC3" Business Wire (09/06/95) Columbia Laboratories, Inc. has filed an Investigational New Drug application with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to begin Phase I/II testing of its AIDS drug, SPC3 (Synthetic Polymeric Construction No. 3). The clinical trials will attempt to determine the correct dosage of the drug in late-stage seropositive individuals. SPC3 prevents HIV from entering susceptible human cells and blocks syncytia formation, which fuses lymphocytes together with infected cells. In vitro studies indicate that SPC3 blocks entrance of all strains of HIV into human cells, unlike previous antivirals and vaccines that have been geared toward a specific strain. "Organiser Hopes AIDS Meet Will Show Thai Success" Reuters (09/06/95) One of the objectives of an impending regional AIDS conference is to show the world how hard Thailand has worked to fight the disease, said a Thai organizer on Wednesday. "We want...to publicize the positive aspects of what Thailand has done about AIDS," said Dr. Natth Bhamarapravati, chairman of the organizing committee for the International Conference on AIDS in Asia and the Pacific. Natth said the meeting--which will be held in Chiang Mai, Thailand, from Sept. 16 to 21--will be a forum to discuss the various aspects of HIV and AIDS. Approximately 3 million people in the Asia-Pacific region are infected with HIV, 800,000 of whom are in Thailand. "New Global AIDS Programme Trying to Break with the Past" Nature Medicine (09/95) Vol. 1, No. 9, P. 862; Tastemain, Catherine When it is fully operational next year, the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV-AIDS (UNAIDS) will organize international AIDS control, superceding the Global Programme on AIDS (GPA). The GPA had an annual budget of approximately $80 million, yet it was viewed as inefficient and unwieldy. UN agencies and donor countries agree with director Peter Piot's broad approach to AIDS control--which he says can be achieved with fairly inexpensive methods--but they have had difficulty accepting some of the related proposals. One controversial action was the decision to include a majority of representatives from developing countries, as well as five representatives of non-governmental organizations, on the Programme Coordinating Board, which ratifies UNAIDS policies. Another problem is keeping the new agency from becoming top heavy. UNAIDS will have 190 employees, compared to GPA's 250, and only those densely populated nations--or those where the AIDS epidemic is especially severe--will have a local UNAIDS representative. In addition, it is still not clear whether UNAIDS will obtain the requisite financial and political support to realize its goals. "Alternative Medicine and HIV/AIDS: Request for Applications" AIDS Treatment News (08/18/95) No. 229, P. 6 The AIDS Research Center at Bastyr University will present as many as five awards totaling $105,000 "for the investigation and evaluation of promising therapies currently in use for treating people with HIV or AIDS." Applicants need to obtain a copy of the Request for Applications, submit a letter of intent as soon as possible, and send in the proposal by Oct. 3. The center's objective is "(1) to describe forms and patterns of use of alternative medical therapies for the treatment of patients with HIV infection and AIDS, and (2) evaluate effectiveness of alternative therapies for the treatment of HIV/AIDS from five program areas of alternative medicine: nutrition, traditional and ethnomedicine, energetic therapies, pharmacological and biological therapies, and bioelectromagnetic medicine." Bastyr's AIDS Research Center was established late last year with a grant from the Office of Alternative Medicine of the National Institutes of Health. "Is Oral Sex Safer Sex? An AIDS Education Dilemma" AIDS Alert (09/95) Vol. 10, No. 9, P. 112 Some AIDS educators have begun to condone unprotected oral sex, and others have stopped condemning it. For example, a recent poster campaign launched by the AIDS Action Committee in Boston states that "Oral Sex Is Safer Sex." This shift in attitudes comes as heads of gay men's groups find themselves trapped in a controversy over whether AIDS education has painted so bleak a picture of the future that some gay men have abandoned all safe sex efforts. One of the new approaches is "negotiated safety," in which both members of a couple, having determined that each is not infected with HIV, agree to have exclusive, unprotected sex with each other. There is also a move to target seronegative men for special campaigns, rather than directing identical safe sex messages at both HIV-positive and -negative men. Although most conservative AIDS educators stand by the position that every instance of sex should be protected, many people view current AIDS education efforts as insufficient, noting the persistence of dangerous sex among gay men and the resurgence of bathhouses. The problem, says clinical psychologist Walter Odets of Berkeley, Calif., is that AIDS education has been too strict and punitive by insisting that gay men be "100 percent safe, 100 percent of the time." "Women: Absent Term in the AIDS Research Equation" Science (08/11/95) Vol. 269, No. 5225, P. 777; Cohen, Jon Until recently, women have in some ways remained an unrecognized element of the AIDS epidemic. Many early studies in women, for example, were limited to blocking maternal-infant HIV transmission. Although gay men account for more than 50 percent of the AIDS cases reported in the United States, women now make up 13 percent of the cumulative total. During the past three years, however, there has been a unified attempt to alter the imbalanced focus of AIDS research, such as mounting several efforts to increase scientific understanding of how HIV affects women. In 1993, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID) began the Women's Interagency HIV Study, a project that will follow 2000 HIV-positive women and 500 more who are at high-risk for becoming infected. In addition, virologist David Phillips of the Population Council has developed a novel test tube model of how HIV is transmitted to women, which starts with the fact that the epithelial cells on the surface of the female genital tract lack a CD4 receptor. Although many have praised his work, others--including the University of California's Christopher Miller--remain skeptical of this theory. Miller believes CD4 cells are critical at the point of HIV infection, and that infected cells may have a far smaller role in infecting women than does virus floating freely in blood or semen. While it is clear there are no immediate answers to these and other questions, the increased research raises the chances of learning how HIV affects and infects women.