Date: Mon, 26 Jun 1995 09:41:04 +0500 From: ghmcleaf{CONTRACTOR/ASPEN/ghmcleaf}%NAC-GATEWAY.ASPEN@ace.aspensys.com AIDS Daily Summary June 26, 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 ************************************************************ "A Version of 'Megan's Law' Has Best Chance on Passage" "Dr. Jonas Salk" "Nixon Kin Tells of Vesco Arrest" "Across the USA: Kansas" "No Nudity Arrests in New York Gay Pride Parade" "Leading AIDS Scientist Suggests that Anti-HIV Efforts Need a Different Focus" "U.N. Faces Bosnia Criticism as It Marks 50th Birthday" "AIDS 'Overshadows' STDs" "Death by Denial" "Rational Drug Design and HIV: Hopes and Limitations" ************************************************************ "A Version of 'Megan's Law' Has Best Chance on Passage" New York Times (06/26/95) P. B5; Sack, Kevin This week, the New York State Legislature will finalize negotiations on several bills--including one that would require doctors to recommend HIV testing to pregnant women. The HIV testing issue has haunted the Legislature for more than two years. New York now tests all newborns for the virus that causes AIDS to obtain data about the spread of HIV, but the results are not given to the parents. Earlier this month, the state Senate approved legislation that would require telling parents the results of their newborns' HIV tests, as well as require doctors to recommend that pregnant women be tested for HIV. The Assembly, however, is unlikely to support a proposal that requires the disclosure of test results. Due to the fact that an infant's positive test result means that the mother is infected, many Democrats object to what would basically be the mandatory testing of new mothers. "Dr. Jonas Salk" Wall Street Journal (06/26/95) P. A1 Dr. Jonas Salk, the medical pioneer who developed the first vaccine against polio, died of heart failure on Friday at the age of 80. In recent years, Salk's work involved trying to find a treatment for AIDS. "Nixon Kin Tells of Vesco Arrest" Washington Post (06/26/95) P. A16 ABC Television reported on Sunday that Donald Nixon, a nephew of the late president Richard M. Nixon, said he watched fugitive financier Robert Vesco taken into custody by Cuban police. According to the report, Nixon saw 18 men in six cars come for Vesco. "I haven't seen him since," he added. Nixon, who is under house arrest in Cuba, is trying to get back his passport, which Cuban authorities confiscated when questioning him about his connections to Vesco. Nixon said he came to Cuba three years ago to obtain Vesco's assistance in manufacturing an anti-AIDS drug that has not been approved in the United States. "Across the USA: Kansas" USA Today (06/26/95) P. 6A According to officials in Kansas, the state requirement that schools provide sex and AIDS education will not be enforceable after Saturday. New regulations mean that compliance cannot be tied into funding or accreditation. "No Nudity Arrests in New York Gay Pride Parade" Reuters (06/25/95); Vinzant, Carol Thousands of people participated in New York's 26th annual Lesbian and Gay Pride parade on Sunday. A heavy police presence surrounded the Fifth Avenue parade route and the police had "certainly made clear that violations of the law would end in arrest," said Police Chief Allan Hoehl. However, despite the appearance of several bare-breasted women and men in thongs and jock straps, no arrests were made. Olympic champion Greg Louganis, who recently revealed that he is gay and has AIDS, served as the event's grand marshall. ACT-UP marched with signs showing House Speaker Newt Gingrich, President Clinton, and other politicians as characters from "The Wizard of Oz," a typical gay reference. Slogans included, "I'd fight AIDS if I only had a heart." "Leading AIDS Scientist Suggests that Anti-HIV Efforts Need a Different Focus" Business Wire (06/23/95) In the current issue of the British medical journal The Lancet, research scientist Dr. Jay A. Levy--who was among the first to identify HIV as the cause of AIDS--says that studies of potential AIDS drugs should be redirected toward eliminating the infected cells which serve as the foundation for HIV production. Levy, a professor of medicine at the University of California at San Francisco, explains, "Focusing only on the virus is akin to treating the symptoms but not the cause." Current treatments, he notes, do not effectively kill HIV-infected cells. Levy says that effective treatment of AIDS will depend on targeting infected cells by stopping HIV from being replicated within infected cells, and by attacking and killing the infected cells. "U.N. Faces Bosnia Criticism as It Marks 50th Birthday" Reuters (06/25/95); Croft, Adrian The United Nations (UN) celebrated its 50th anniversary on Sunday. The celebration, however, was tempered by criticism of the international organization's Bosnia stance and reminders of its perilous financial state. Leaders including UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali and Polish President Lech Walesa attended an interfaith service on Sunday at San Francisco's Grace Cathedral marking the anniversary of the signing of the UN Charter in San Francisco in 1945. There were also at least three separate protests against the UN in San Francisco that day. One involved about 150 demonstrators, shouting slogans and carrying signs, who marched to urge the UN to take a more aggressive stance in the war against AIDS. Police escorted the group as it marched toward the Opera House, where the UN's founding conference was held 50 years ago. "AIDS 'Overshadows' STDs" U.S. Pharmacist (06/95) Vol. 20, No. 6, P. 102 Despite the fact that a greater number of people are infected with conventional sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), AIDS has taken precedence during recent years. "STDs have major implications for women's health," says Dr. Harold Wiesenfeld of the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. Studies show that prior infection with an STD facilitates the spread of HIV. Researchers, however, are not sure how nonulcerative STDs--such as gonorrhea or chlamydia--make women more susceptible to the virus that causes AIDS. Two possible reasons include the fact that the number of CD4 cells increases significantly in the vaginal and cervical secretions of women with nonulcerative STDs and that, in the presence of STDs, vaginal tissues become unsound--which increases the risk of microabrasions and transmission via broken tissue. "Death by Denial" Lancet (06/17/95) Vol. 345, No. 8964, P. 1519 Without a doubt, AIDS has caused the greatest upset in the history of public health, write the editors of the Lancet. This defeat is most apparent in sub-Saharan Africa. It is estimated that AIDS will double the death rate of 13 African nations within 15 years. When opening a recent meeting on HIV prevention and family planning in Nairobi, Dr. Fred Sai observed that there is a deafening silence surrounding the AIDS epidemic. Although it may seem odd that AIDS prevention and family planning were topics for the same conference, the two involve overlapping skills--both use condoms, both work in a similar political environment, and in the end, both compete for the same funds in the ministry of health or donor agency. Much of the support for these programs comes from outside sources, of which the U.S. Agency for International Development has been the largest. Sub-Saharan Africa will be hard hit if Congress implements the planned 30 percent cut in foreign aid next year. For both humanitarian reasons and grounds of self interest, conclude the editors, Western nations should rethink their policies in relation to AIDS and family planning in Africa. "Rational Drug Design and HIV: Hopes and Limitations" Nature Medicine (06/95) Vol. 1, No. 6, P. 519; Goody, Roger S. Recent studies of HIV protease and reverse transcriptase (RT) enzymes demonstrate some of the issues involved in rational drug design. Inhibitors have been discovered by using combinations of several techniques, which are all successful to the extent that highly potent HIV-enzyme inhibitors of differing yet acceptable bioavailability and toxicity were found. In the future, it is probable that developments will encompass similar, but different, combined strategies. However, it is unlikely that a purely rational structure and mechanism-based approach will become universally applicable, as illustrated by the emerging details on non-nucleoside inhibitors (NNIs) of HIV-1 RT. When an NNI is not bound, the binding pocket does not even exist. It is therefore unlikely that the potential site and an appropriate structure that could bind with high affinity would ever have been found using an uninhibited structure. It is probable that intelligent combination of current methods will continue to identify potential drugs at an increased rate. In the case of HIV, however, optimism must be balanced by the recognition of the problem of resistant virus variants, from which the above examples suffer. In conclusion, there is a need for a better understanding of the structure and mechanism of the target enzymes and the mechanism of inhibition under both in vitro and in vivo conditions.