Date: Thu, 18 Apr 1996 10:37:10 +0500 From: "Sarah Araghi" Subject: CDC AIDS Daily Summary 4/18/96 AIDS Daily Summary April 18, 1996 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 National AIDS Clearinghouse, or any other organization. Reproduction of this text is encouraged; however, copies may not be sold, and the CDC National AIDS Clearinghouse should be cited as the source of this information. Copyright 1996, Information, Inc., Bethesda, MD ************************************************************ "Insurance Payout for Man Who Hid HIV" "Amgen Says Net Climbed 32%; New Product Set" "China to Define Quarantine Zone" "Three Drugs Better Than One or Two in AIDS Fight" "Engineered AIDS Vaccine Not Effective--U.S. Study" "Cytokines May Play Clinical Role in HIV Infection" "Zimbabwean Traditions Blamed for Spreading AIDS" "Transmission of Multidrug-Resistant Mycobacterium Tuberculosis During a Long Airplane Flight" "HIV-1 Nef Structure May Help in Drug Design" ************************************************************ "Insurance Payout for Man Who Hid HIV" Financial Times (04/18/96) P. 3; Jack, Andrew A French insurance company has agreed to repay the balance of a housing loan to the family of a man who died of an AIDS-related illness and who had not told insurers he was HIV-positive. A court ruled in favor of the family, ordering the insurance company to repay the family the $17,716 it had demanded from them after the man's death. Although the company argued that the man had made a false medical declaration, the family said he was truthful when he responded to a questionnaire that he was not ill with AIDS and was not receiving any treatment. "Amgen Says Net Climbed 32%; New Product Set" Wall Street Journal (04/18/96) P. B6; Rundle, Rhonda L. Amgen reported a 32 percent increase in first-quarter net income and announced a new product candidate as well as the filing of an application for an experimental hepatitis C drug. The new product is a protein that stimulates the growth of red blood cells, and the company says it may be better than Amgen's successful Epogen. The company filed a new drug application with the Food and Drug Administration on April 10 for Infergen, a consensus interferon to treat hepatitis C. Analysts are dubious about Infergen's potential, because the drug's human test results have not shown a clear superiority over other interferons. "China to Define Quarantine Zone" Boston Globe (04/17/96) P. 17 The Chinese province of Yunnan will establish quarantine checkpoints along its borders with Vietnam, Laos, and Burma to prevent the rapid spread of HIV and other diseases. Drug use along the 2,500-mile border has contributed to the spread of HIV into the country. Almost three-quarters of China's known AIDS patients are in Yunnan. The government will spend $58 million to set up the checkpoints. "Three Drugs Better Than One or Two in AIDS Fight" Reuters (04/17/96); Gevirtz, Leslie Treatment with three drugs is more effective against HIV than any combination of just two, according to a study in today's issue of the New England Journal of Medicine. The study, conducted by the AIDS Clinical Trials Group, found that the combination of Hoffmann-LaRoche's saquinavir (Invirase) and zalcitabine (ddC) along with Glaxo-Wellcome's AZT, was most effective in reducing HIV's ability to replicate. The drug combination was compared to that of either saquinavir or zalcitabine with AZT. The treatments were tolerated equally well, researcher Ann Collier of the University of Washington reported. "Engineered AIDS Vaccine Not Effective--U.S. Study" Reuters (04/17/96); Aldinger, Charles A genetically engineered AIDS vaccine was found to be ineffective in helping to stop progression of the disease, U.S. military researchers reported Wednesday. The five-year clinical study of Microgenesys' vaccine gp160 was conducted by scientists from the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and civilian medical centers. The study tested the vaccine in more than 600 military and civilian volunteers with early HIV infections and found that no clinical improvement could be attributed to the treatment. The research is considered the first successful HIV vaccine therapy trial ever performed with a vaccine engineered in a laboratory because it showed that such interagency studies could be conducted among volunteers in the early stages of HIV infection. "Cytokines May Play Clinical Role in HIV Infection" Reuters (04/17/96) New research has found that cytokines may play a clinical role in modulating cytokine-associated symptoms in the early phases of HIV infection. Previous studies have implicated the cytokines interleukin-1-beta and tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-alpha) with fever, cachexia, and inflammation in animals and humans. Donald M. Thea of the New England Medical Center in Boston and colleagues evaluated HIV-positive women treated at a clinic in Zaire. The researchers were surprised to find that the levels of several cytokines differed for women who had AIDS, compared to those who were asymptomatic and those who were HIV-negative. Only the asymptomatic HIV-positive women had high levels of interleukin-1 beta and TNF-alpha. Most of the women with AIDS did not have these cytokines. Thea suggests that this finding could be a "result of late-stage debilitation and a limited capacity to synthesize new proteins, including cytokines." "Zimbabwean Traditions Blamed for Spreading AIDS" PANA News Service (04/17/96); Jonhera, Tambudzai Traditional marriage and sexual practices in Zimbabwe have been blamed for helping to increase the number of HIV infections in the country to beyond 1 million. Health experts have pointed to polygamous marriages, the inheritance of widows by brothers after their husbands die of AIDS, and the practice of men having children with their wives' relatives if the wives are barren. There are an estimated 150,000 AIDS cases in the country, and more than 1 million people are infected with HIV. Women are put at high risk by the traditions, which make them vulnerable to men. Some beliefs, like women being barren if they have secret affairs, help control the spread of disease. The emergence of sex as a human rights issue, however, has resulted in most young women indulging in pre-marital sex. "Transmission of Multidrug-Resistant Mycobacterium Tuberculosis During a Long Airplane Flight" New England Journal of Medicine (04/11/96) Vol. 334, No. 15, P. 933; Kenyon, Thomas A.; Valway, Sarah E.; Ihle, Walter W.; et al. In April 1994, a commercial-airline passenger with infectious multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (TB) traveled from Honolulu to Chicago and from Chicago to Baltimore, and returned in May. To determine if the woman had infected any of the people she contacted on the trip, Dr. Thomas A. Kenyon and colleagues from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention identified the passengers and crew of the planes from airline records. U.S. residents who were notifiable were informed of their exposure, asked to complete a questionnaire, and screened with tuberculin skin tests. The 11 people from the pertinent April flights who tested positive to the skin test were found to have other risk factors for TB, as did two of three people with positive tests who were on the Baltimore to Chicago flight in May. More people on the final, 8.75 hour flight from Chicago to Honolulu had positive skin tests than those on the other three flights. Among the 15 people from this flight who tested positive, six individuals had no risk factors except for the fact that they sat in the same section of the plane as the infected woman. Passengers sitting within two rows of her were more likely to have positive tests than those in other rows in the section. "HIV-1 Nef Structure May Help in Drug Design" Lancet (04/13/96) Vol. 347, No. 9007, P. 1032 The structure of Nef, an accessory protein in HIV-1, has recently been described and appears to be essential for the virus' pathogenicity, like other such proteins. In infected cells, Nef downregulates CD4, the receptor for HIV-1, preventing superinfection of cells and premature lysis, thereby allowing maximum viral activity. Nef also enhances virus infectivity in quiescent cells, possibly helping to activate normally quiescent CD4-bearing lymphocytes through cellular signaling systems. Nef binds to the signaling molecules Hck and Lyn through the src homology three (SH3) domain, which is thought to be involved in protein-protein interactions necessary for signal transduction. Stephan Grzesiek and colleagues report that Nef's binding site for the SH3 domain of Hck uniquely consists of non-contiguous amino acids. These findings may be helpful in rational drug design targeted at blocking the interaction between Nef and Hck without inhibiting cellular SH3-target interactions for normal signal transduction.