From root@aspensys.com Tue Jan 24 09:18:17 1995 Date: Tue, 24 Jan 1995 09:17:04 +0500 From: ghmcleaf{CONTRACTOR/ASPEN/ghmcleaf}%NAC-GATEWAY.ASPEN@ace.aspensys.com AIDS Daily Summary January 24, 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 ************************************************************ "Glaxo Bids $14 Billion for Rival Wellcome" "Long-Term Survivors May Hold Key Clues to Puzzle of AIDS" "AIDS Group Is Crippled, Groups Say" "Cypriot Hospital Staff Panicked by AIDS Patient" "Six Finalists Selected for Tenth Annual Absolut Golden Shears Competition" "Cold Reality" "Oral Ganciclovir Approved" "Bill Would Shift CDC Programs to State Block Grants" "When Good People Become Accomplices in Kids' Deaths" "GRANTWATCH/Making Connections: AIDS and Communities" ************************************************************ "Glaxo Bids $14 Billion for Rival Wellcome" Washington Post (01/24/95) P. D1; Hilzenrath, David S. British pharmaceutical company Glaxo Holdings PLC on Monday initiated a $14 billion bid for rival Wellcome PLC, which would make it the largest pharmaceutical company in the world. Analysts said the value of the cash and stock offer was 49 percent higher than the closing price of Wellcome's shares on Friday, and seemed designed to discourage any competing bids. Glaxo's move reflects the push for greater efficiency and market control throughout the pharmaceutical industry as health maintenance organizations (HMOs), hospitals, and other large buyers of prescription drugs demand more competitive prices. Glaxo, which says it ranks second to Merck & Co. in global drug sales, counts on the anti-ulcer medication Zantac for more than 40 percent of its earnings. Wellcome's primary prescription medicines are Zovirax, a herpes treatment, and Retrovir (AZT), which is administered to AIDS patients. Related Stories: Wall Street Journal (01/24) P. A3; New York Times (01/24) P. D1 "Long-Term Survivors May Hold Key Clues to Puzzle of AIDS" New York Times (01/24/95) P. C1; Altman, Lawrence K. Increasingly, researchers are looking to long-term survivors of HIV in hopes of finding a key to the puzzle. If such people differ in some way--either in their immune systems or in the variety of infecting virus, for example--the knowledge could lead to improved treatments or even a successful vaccine. A key question is how a small percentage of HIV-positive people remain healthy for so long, while the majority develop AIDS within a decade after infection. Up to 10 percent of the HIV-infected are non-progressors--those who are infected with HIV for 10 years or more without progressing to AIDS, while their immune systems shows little or no evidence of damage. Studies are beginning to show that long-term survivors are a diverse group with no single biological factor explaining why they have a more favorable course than others. The method of HIV transmission does not appear to be a factor. Virologist Dr. Ronald C. Desrosiers theorizes that most long-term non-progressors have some kind of mutant HIV. He has developed an experimental vaccine against SIV, purposely deleting one of the virus' nine genes in the laboratory. The vaccine has protected monkeys against SIV for more than three years. "AIDS Group Is Crippled, Groups Say" New York Times (01/24/95) P. B3; Hicks, Jonathan P. At a New York City Council hearing on Monday, leaders of community groups that work with AIDS patients clashed with officials of the Giuliani administration, claiming that budget and work force cuts had severely diminished the effectiveness of the city's Division of AIDS Services. While the officials admitted that AIDS workers have higher case loads, they noted that more efficient management had permitted the agency to accommodate AIDS patients' needs. Leaders of several community-based organizations, however, argued that the agency is operating inefficiently and that vacant positions have not been filled. Administration officials said that 121 workers had left the agency through the city's severance program and that 14 workers had been redeployed. The agency's budget has also been reduced from $72.7 million to $57.4 million. Mayor Giuliani has stated that despite the reduced number of employees, the redeployment would make the provision of AIDS services more efficient. Some city council members, however, noted that the AIDS advocates' statements suggested the redeployment plan was not working as well as the administration indicated. "Cypriot Hospital Staff Panicked by AIDS Patient" Reuters (01/23/95) Panicked by reports that a man treated following a car accident was HIV-infected, the staff in a Cypriot hospital accused the health ministry of not providing proper safety equipment. "It was an emergency, the injured AIDS carrier was bleeding heavily, he had to be stitched on the mouth...of course he did not say anything which is criminal but equally criminal is the fact that we were not properly equipped," said one doctor who took part in the surgery. While not responding specifically, the health ministry told journalists the staff should treat every patient as a potential carrier of HIV. According to official statistics, there were 193 cases of AIDS in Cyprus by the end of 1994. "Six Finalists Selected for Tenth Annual Absolut Golden Shears Competition" Business Wire (01/23/95) Six Northern California fashion designers have been selected to compete in the Tenth Annual Absolut Golden Shears Awards, which is sponsored by Absolut Vodka and San Francisco Focus magazine. The designers will present their fashions on the runway at a gala evening fashion show and celebration reception, to be held at the San Francisco Fashion Center in early May. The event will benefit Project Open Hand, a direct-service organization which delivers thousands of meals to people with AIDS. "Cold Reality" St. Louis Post-Dispatch (01/23/95) P. 1E; Krouse, Karen Last month, 25-year-old Nicole Lesh, veteran of such figure-skating productions as "Snoopy's Nutcracker on Ice" at Knott's Berry Farm, became the first female professional athlete to publicly reveal that she is HIV-positive. She made her announcement at the Skating Club of Worcester (Mass.), site of the 11th U.S. Open Professional Figure Skating Championship. "My whole objective was to show people what it's like to live with HIV," said Lesh, who skated her program with a red silk ribbon tied around her waist, symbolic of her tainted blood. Lesh believes she became infected through unprotected sex with a boyfriend, who she later discovered dealt heroin, and may have used the drug. She said she was not sure whether she wanted to broadcast her past because she feared society would judge her more harshly than if she had come by the virus blamelessly. "Oral Ganciclovir Approved" AIDS Treatment News (01/06/95) No. 214, P. 1 Syntex recently announced that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had approved oral ganciclovir for marketing. Ganciclovir has long been used for treating CMV retinitis, which causes blindness in AIDS patients if left untreated. A significant disadvantage of the drug is that it has to be administered intravenously twice a day. Treatment with ganciclovir involves two stages: induction therapy, followed by maintenance therapy. Although intravenous treatment is still necessary for induction, oral ganciclovir can be used for maintenance in some patients. Because maintenance with the oral drug is somewhat less effective than the intravenous, the FDA denoted use of oral ganciclovir only for those "for whom the risk of more rapid disease progression is balanced by the benefit associated with avoiding daily IV infusions." Oral ganciclovir is taken with food, either three times a day or six times a day. Many of the side effects of intravenous ganciclovir are still present in its oral form, particularly hematological toxicities. "Bill Would Shift CDC Programs to State Block Grants" American Medical News (01/23/95-01/30/95) Vol. 38, No. 4, P. 4; Jones, Laurie New legislation introduced by Sen. Nancy Landon Kassebaum (R-Kan.) would shift the authority for allocating most federal public health funds to the states. The bill would transform the many programs operated by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) into a single block grant, to be distributed among the states based on a formula that accounts for population, health status, and financial resources. Currently, most CDC grants must be spent on specified health problems, such as HIV or lead poisoning. States are the main recipients, generally receiving grants for programs in multiple categories, but local governments and private organizations also receive CDC grants. The bill's goal, according to Kassebaum, is to increase state flexibility and decrease administrative costs. "A lot of folks are concerned that turning these programs over to the states is a way to decimate funding for public health," says Jay Coburn, a lobbyist for the AIDS Action Council. The legislation, which will likely be debated later this year, would bundle an existing preventive-services block grant program with categorical-grant programs that concern HIV, immunization, sexually transmitted diseases, tobacco, and tuberculosis control. "When Good People Become Accomplices in Kids' Deaths" Village Voice (01/10/95) Vol. 40, No. 2, P. 20; Hentoff, Nat Not telling a new mother that she is HIV-positive, thereby creating a chance that when she goes home she may infect her baby through breast-milk, is a violation of human rights, writes Nat Hentoff in the Village Voice. Advocacy groups such as the National Organization for Women (NOW), the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU), and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) have successfully lobbied to kill a bill in the New York state legislature that would have revealed which babies were HIV-infected to their mother and doctors. The discovery that AZT reduces maternal-infant transmission of HIV by two-thirds has sparked a great controversy. For example, Dr. Philip Pizzo of the National Institutes of Health said that many children's lives could be saved if all pregnant women were given AZT. However, Dr. Ruth Macklin, a bioethicist at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, argued that mandatory testing "is an invasion of privacy." Extensive research caused Maryland lawyer Nancy Karkowsky to conclude that there is "a state authority to test, diagnose, and treat children for a life-threatening condition. The state [also] has a duty to minimize or reduce sources of infection in the general population." "GRANTWATCH/Making Connections: AIDS and Communities" Health Affairs (Winter 1994) Vol. 13, No. 5, P. 247 Making Connections: AIDS and Communities describes several of the 54 projects awarded funding under The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's $16.7 million AIDS Prevention and Service Program. The foundation notes that it is "funding projects focused on specific chronic disease categories" much less frequently now. The program's experiences led to a focus on problems in the U.S. health care system that need to be changed to help meet the complex needs of the chronically ill. THE END.