Date: Mon, 16 Oct 1995 09:53:16 +0500 From: ghmcleaf{CONTRACTOR/ASPEN/ghmcleaf}%NAC-GATEWAY.ASPEN@ace.aspensys.com Subject: CDC AIDS Daily Summary 10/16/95 AIDS Daily Summary October 16, 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 ************************************************************ "Across the USA: Pennsylvania" "The Economic Cost of AIDS" "AIDS Warning Ignored, Inquiry Told" "LXR Biotechnology Awarded Grant to Research Ways of Slowing Progression of HIV to AIDS; Company Among First to Approach Halting AIDS by Halting Programmed T-Cell Death" "Death Frees Parents to Talk About Son's Struggle With AIDS" "Potential Animal Model for AIDS" "Around the Nation: California and Ohio" "Head and Neck Lymphomas Associated with Human Immunodeficiency Virus Infection" ************************************************************ "Across the USA: Pennsylvania" USA Today (10/16/95) P. 10A Organizers of the Philadelphia AIDS Walk said that more than 25,000 people participated in the event and raised $1.1 million for research and treatment. "The Economic Cost of AIDS" Los Angeles Times (10/13/95); Oldham, Jennifer By the year 2000, AIDS will have cost the global economy up to $514 billion and possible 1.4 percent of the world's gross domestic product. AIDS is also having a major impact on businesses around the world because it most frequently strikes adults at the peak of their productivity. The disease will have sheared between $81 billion and $107 billion from the U.S. economy by 2000. Between $3 billion and $6 billion is spent on new infections annually, and $75 billion has already been spent on the disease to date. Two-thirds of companies with from 2,500 to 5,000 workers and one in 12 small business have had an employee with HIV or AIDS. The effect of the disease on these businesses adds up to about $32,000 annually for each infected employee. The United Nations estimates that AIDS will eliminate 25 percent of Africa's overall labor force by 2010. The majority of AIDS patients there are well-educated urban professionals, who were expected to help the continent reach prosperity. "AIDS Warning Ignored, Inquiry Told" Toronto Globe and Mail (10/13/95) P. A7 An inquiry heard Thursday indicated that federal officials ignored a plea for AIDS funding from Alastair Clayton, former director of the Laboratory Centre for Disease Control. Clayton told officials in August 1984, that the government must study and control HIV, which was then infecting Canada's blood supply. Clayton wrote to A.J. Liston, then head of the Health Protection Branch, that AIDS "may become the most serious scourge of mankind this century." Health and Welfare Canada waited nearly two years to allot about C$13 million for AIDS funding, the inquiry heard. The inquiry is investigating why thousands of Canadians contracted HIV and hepatitis C from contaminated blood in the 1980s. Critics accuse Canada of lagging behind other industrialized countries in protecting its blood supply from these viruses. "LXR Biotechnology Awarded Grant to Research Ways of Slowing Progression of HIV to AIDS; Company Among First to Approach Halting AIDS by Halting Programmed T-Cell Death" Business Wire (10/13/95) LXR Biotechnology announced Friday that it has received a research grant to study whether a particular variant of the Fas/CD95 antigen can halt apoptosis in T-cell of people who are infected with HIV, thereby impeding their progression into full-blown AIDS. The Fas/CD95 variant was discovered by LXR researchers and collaborators and described in the journal Science in 1994. The research funded by this grant will be the first to attempt to stop apoptosis. "Death Frees Parents to Talk About Son's Struggle With AIDS" St. Louis Post-Dispatch (10/13/95) P. 1A; Malone, Roy Mark Czapla's family was forced to flee Jefferson County, Mo., two years ago due to a rumor that a student at Hillsboro Elementary School had AIDS. Czapla, who was born three months prematurely, contracted the disease from a blood transfusion when he was about five weeks old. His family survived five attempts to burn down their house; furthermore, words such as "AIDS," "Burn," and "Leave" were scrawled on the outside of their home. The Czapla family believes the harassment was due to bitterness over a soured business deal with Mark's father. When Mark Czapla began school in Hillsboro, his parents informed school and health officials of his disease, although they were not legally required to do so. The officials guarded the Czaplas' privacy, but a television newscast reported the story in 1992, which resulted in bomb threats and arson attempts against the family. The Czaplas finally found refuge in Washington County, but Mark died in October 1995. A Mark Czapla Fund has been established to defray funeral costs and contribute money for AIDS research. "Potential Animal Model for AIDS" Science (09/29/95) Vol. 269, No. 5232, P. 1819 By combining elements of HIV with parts of simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV), researchers have come up with a virus that eventually could be a new monkey model for testing AIDS drugs. While working in the lab of virologist Joseph Sodroski at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Klaus Uberla of Germany's University of Erlangen-Numberg and his colleagues substituted the SIV gene for reverse transcriptase (RT) with the HIV-1 RT gene. According to the report in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, this "RT-SHIV" can duplicate itself. The researchers have also shown in a small group of monkeys that the RT-SHIV can cause AIDS and therefore could be useful for testing drugs that block RT. "Around the Nation: California and Ohio" Advocate (10/17/95) No. 692, P. 14 The California state legislature approved a measure in September that would allow people with AIDS and certain other illnesses to grow and possess marijuana. The bill, however, will likely be rejected by Gov. Pete Wilson. Meanwhile, the Akron Beacon Journal reports that the Ohio Department of Health has halted its AIDS prevention activities pending a probe of possible violations of confidentiality as regards to the sexual orientation and HIV status of its AIDS volunteers. "Head and Neck Lymphomas Associated with Human Immunodeficiency Virus Infection" Journal of the American Medical Association (10/11/95) Vol. 274, No. 14, P. 1101 Between 1984 and 1992, researchers in Italy evaluated more than 70 HIV-infected patients in order to collect clinicopathologic data about non-Hodgkin's lymphomas (NHLs) of the head and neck region. Two-thirds of the patients with primary, solitary head and neck (P-HN) lymphoma had stages I and II, while all of the systemic head and neck (S-HN) lymphoma patients had stages III and IV. At presentation, 27 of 28 patients had extranodal disease, the principal sites of which were Waldeyer's ring and soft tissues. Combination therapy, either with or without radiation therapy, produced a complete remission in seven of 12 of the P-HN lymphoma patients and just two of the S-HN patients. Patients with P-HN lymphoma survived an average of 9.8 months, while all other patients lived an average of 8.3 months. The researchers therefore concluded that common characteristics of HIV-infected patients with head and neck NHL include severe immunodeficiency, extranodal disease, and poor response to treatment.