Date: Fri, 5 Jan 1996 11:14:15 +0500 From: ghmcleaf{CONTRACTOR/ASPEN/ghmcleaf}%NAC-GATEWAY.ASPEN@ace.aspensys.com Subject: CDC AIDS Daily Summary 01/05/96 AIDS Daily Summary January 5, 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 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 1996, Information, Inc., Bethesda, MD ************************************************************ "Patient With Baboon Marrow Goes Home" "Work Stops at Labs and Waste Sites" "Budget Talks Mired in Politics" "News Summary: HIV Hope" "AIDS stamp to be issued in May" "Highlights: Dateline NBC" "First 500,000 AIDS Cases--United States, 1995" "U.N. Promotes Social Change to Fight AIDS" "AIDS Update: Sharing Cells" "A Year of Transformation in HIV/AIDS" ************************************************************ "Patient With Baboon Marrow Goes Home" Washington Post (01/05/96) P. A22 Jeff Getty, the 38-year old AIDS patient who received an infusion of baboon bone marrow, went home from the hospital yesterday in good spirits. Determining if Getty's body has adopted the baboon's cells, which are naturally resistant to HIV, could take weeks or months. Getty will return to the hospital next week for tests. Steven Deeks, one of Getty's doctors, said, "the procedure was safe, safer than we had initially expected." He also said that Getty's immune system was back to almost the same level as before the transplant, and that there were no signs of infection from baboon-transmitted organisms. "Work Stops at Labs and Waste Sites" New York Times (01/05/96) P. D19; Leary, Warren E. The federal government's partial shutdown has forced laboratories to close, kept new patients from being enrolled in experimental treatment programs, caused meetings to be canceled, and kept thousands of researchers from getting funding. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has not been able to award nearly 4,000 grants for medical research, of about $200,000 each. At the institutes' clinical center in Rockville, Md., patients are still being seen and treated, but no new patients are being enrolled. Of the NIH's 16,000 employees, 9,300 have been furloughed. Those that continue to work are conducting critical experiments that could not be interrupted. Scientists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are behind schedule on the viral studies for next year's influenza vaccine. "Budget Talks Mired in Politics" Washington Post (01/05/96) P. A1; Devroy, Ann Medicare and Medicaid remain issues of dispute between congressional Republicans and President Clinton, and are cited as key items in the budget debate. While Republicans wanted to save $201 billion on Medicare, Clinton has said he would save $97 billion. Liberals in the Democratic party want to protect Medicare. Republicans offered to limit their Medicare savings to between $155 billion and $165 billion, but are steadfast on related policy issues, like medical savings accounts and managed care requirements. The sides differ on Medicaid spending by $80 billion. The White House has maintained that Medicaid should remain a legal entitlement and not be turned into a state grant program. "News Summary: HIV Hope" Knight-Ridder (01/04/96) Medical researchers in Japan announced that they have discovered an antibody that kills HIV-infected cells. The researchers found the antibody in the blood of seven HIV carriers who have not developed AIDS, even though they have had the virus for 12 years. "AIDS stamp to be issued in May" Toronto Globe and Mail (01/04/96) P. A4 To commemorate the fight against AIDS, the Canada Post will issue an AIDS stamp in May, at the time of the 11th annual AIDS conference in Vancouver. A conference poster by Vancouver artist Joe Average is the basis of the stamp's design, which is described as a Picasso-like collage of faces. "Highlights: Dateline NBC" Washington Post (01/05/96) P. F4 At 9 p.m. tonight, the newsmagazine program Dateline NBC will broadcast an account of three people who have been participating in an HIV drug trial since 1993. "First 500,000 AIDS Cases--United States, 1995" Journal of the American Medical Association (12/20/95) Vol. 274, No. 23, P. 1827 The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that as of Oct. 31, 1995, a total of 501,310 Americans had AIDS. Sixty-two percent of those people had died. Of the total AIDS cases, 10 percent were reported during 1981-1987, 41 percent during 1988-1992, and 49 percent during 1993- October 1995. Among women, the proportion of cases increased from 8 percent during 1981-1987 to 18 percent during 1993-October 1995. Among whites, the percentage of cases decreased from 60 percent to 43 percent, though it rose from 25 percent to 38 percent and from 14 percent to 18 percent among blacks and Hispanics, respectively. The proportion of cases rose among injection drug users, and the percentage of people who were infected through heterosexual sex increased from 3 percent to 10 percent. Among homosexual men, the proportion of cases decreased from 64 percent to 45 percent. The largest proportionate increase in cases was reported in the South. A greater proportion of cases was reported in small metropolitan statistical areas and rural regions of the South and Midwest among adolescents and young adults than among those in the Northeast and West. "U.N. Promotes Social Change to Fight AIDS" American Medical News (01/01/96) Vol. 39, No. 1, P. 20 On Dec. 1, World AIDS Day, the United Nations (UN) urged an end to discrimination against people with AIDS and called for aid to impoverished individuals fighting the disease. "Alienating people from society breeds helplessness, indifference, and contempt," observed James Gustave Speth, administrator of the UN Development Program. Speaking at a panel discussion on the AIDS epidemic, Speth continued, "In such an environment...we feel we have nothing to gain by protecting ourselves or others, thus creating fertile ground for the spread of HIV." Dr. Peter Piot, head of UNAIDS, said that more than 2 million HIV infections occurred in the past year. Piot noted that the majority of the AIDS-related deaths were in the developing world, where some 90 percent of the 14 million to 15 million infected individuals reside. The World Health Organization calculates that 18.5 million adults and more than 1.5 million children have become HIV-infected since the late 1970s. There will be an estimated 30 million to 40 million infections by the year 2000. "AIDS Update: Sharing Cells" Men's Health (01/96-02/96) Vol. 11, No. 1, P. 33 Researchers at San Francisco's Saint Francis Memorial Hospital are trying to determine whether transplanting healthy immune cells from a person's HIV-negative sibling will increase his or her ability to fight HIV, thereby counteracting drug limitations. "A Year of Transformation in HIV/AIDS" Lancet--Supplement (12/23/95-12/30/95) Vol. 346, P. s12; Montaner, Julio S.G.; Schechter, Martin T. Several fundamental transformations in the war on HIV/AIDS occurred in 1995, note Montaner and Schechter of the University of British Columbia's Faculty of Medicine, in a year-end supplement to the Lancet. Among other findings, observation became intervention when a trial in rural Tanzania showed that a comprehensive sexually transmitted disease-control program reduced HIV infection rates by more than 40 percent over two years. Also, the medical community's view of Kaposi's sarcoma (KS) was transformed from that of a classic tumor to that of an infectious disease as researchers learned more about the epidemiology of the disease. Furthermore, Montaner and Schechter state that the era of monotherapy has been supplanted for an era of combination therapy. Both ACTG 175 and Europe's Delta trial revealed that AZT plus ddI and AZT plus ddC are better combinations than AZT alone. In 1996, the authors hope for a continued shift in focus from risk observation to risk intervention. Montaner and Schechter also anticipate the definitive characterization of KS-associated herpesvirus, as well as a deluge of data regarding the efficacy of combination drug treatments.