Date: Wed, 22 May 1996 13:40:23 -0400 From: aidsinfo Subject: CDC AIDS Daily Summary 05/22/96 AIDS Daily Summary May 22, 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 ************************************************************ "Rules on HIV Testing a Blessing or a Curse?" "France Drops Expulsion of Zairean Mother With AIDS" "HIV Saliva Testing Kit Exhibits 100% Accuracy" "New Trial in Rape of U.S. Toddler Who Died of AIDS" "Off-Label Drug Use in HIV Infection: Common and Widespread" "HIV-1 Replication in Brain: A Late Development" "The Estimated Prevalence and Incidence of HIV in 96 Large U.S. Metropolitan Areas" "Aileen Getty Comes Clean" "AIDS: Paper Trail" ************************************************************ "Rules on HIV Testing a Blessing or a Curse?" Houston Chronicle (05/21/96) P. 9A; Jones, Rachel L. Mandatory HIV testing of newborns, a proposal that was recently was accepted by Congress, represents an infringement of privacy to some but is a good health policy to others. The Ryan White Care Act, signed into law on Monday, provides states with $10 million to implement HIV counseling, voluntary testing, and medical treatment for pregnant women, and testing of newborns. States that do not show that their rates of maternal and pediatric AIDS have decreased risk losing federal AIDS funding in three years. Critics of mandatory testing say it can lead to discrimination, loss of health insurance, and child custody. Others, however, including Cassandra Mariner, an HIV-infected mother of six, strongly support such testing, noting that they would not care to bring a child into the world to possibly go through what they have with the illness. "France Drops Expulsion of Zairean Mother With AIDS" Reuters (05/21/96) The planned expulsion of a Zairean woman with AIDS who immigrated to France illegally was stopped due to protests by the AIDS group ACT-UP. The woman's two-year-old child, also infected with HIV, was born in France and would have been separated from her mother. ACT-UP and Sol En Si, a charity for children with AIDS, intervened, arguing that sending the mother to Zaire would be like killing her, because she could not receive proper medical care there, and that it was not right to separate the mother and child. "HIV Saliva Testing Kit Exhibits 100% Accuracy" Reuters (05/21/96) A new HIV test, made by Israel's Orgenics Ltd., has been found to be 100 percent accurate at detecting HIV antibodies in saliva. The study was led by University of Maryland researcher Rebecca Saville, who said the test requires little training and because it does not require blood collection. The test, called ImmunoComb, gives results within 30 minutes. "New Trial in Rape of U.S. Toddler Who Died of AIDS" Reuters (05/21/96) A 41-year-old Montgomery, Ala., man accused of raping a four-year-old girl who later died of AIDS, went on trial for the second time Tuesday. A retrial was ordered after a deadlocked jury could not reach a verdict last December. The girl, who was raped by Willie Dean Robinson when he was babysitting her in Feb. 1992, died of AIDS last month. The girl's mother first reported a problem when her daughter was found to have gonorrhea several weeks after she was in Robinson's care. When the girl's infection did not clear up, she was tested for HIV. Robinson also tested positive for the virus and admitted to police that he had gonorrhea at the time the child was raped. The accused was not charged with murder because it is not certain whether Robinson knew he was HIV-positive in 1992 and it is thus not possible to prove he meant to kill. "Off-Label Drug Use in HIV Infection: Common and Widespread" Reuters (05/21/96) Off-label drug use for treating HIV is common and often represents community standards of care, according to Carol L. Brosgart of Community Consortium in San Francisco. In the Journal of AIDS & Human Retroviruses, Brosgart and coworkers report that they evaluated drug prescription information provided by primary care providers for more than 1,100 patients with HIV. The researchers found that 81 percent of patients received at least one drug off-label and that 40 percent of all reported drug use was off-label. The majority of the off-label drug use was for the treatment and prevention of HIV-related opportunistic infections, Brosgart said. "HIV-1 Replication in Brain: A Late Development" Reuters (05/21/96) HIV-1 can be detected in the brain early in infection, but replication of the virus is constrained until the terminal phase of AIDS encephalitis, a group of European researchers report. Francesca Chiodi and colleagues at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm tested parenchumal tissue from eight HIV-infected patients in different stages of infection. They found that an increased number of viral copies in the brain was associated with histopathological evidence of HIV-1 encephalitis. The researchers suggest that, while the virus may enter the brain early in infection, replication is limited until the terminal phase of AIDS encephalitis. "The Estimated Prevalence and Incidence of HIV in 96 Large U.S. Metropolitan Areas" American Journal of Public Health (05/96) Vol. 86, No. 5, P. 642; Holmberg, Scott D. To estimate the size and direction of the HIV epidemic in large U.S. cities, Scott D. Holmberg of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention analyzed information on the epidemic in 96 cities. City-specific studies of at-risk persons, information on reported AIDS cases in each city, and information provided by local and state health professionals was reviewed. The study focused on injection drug users, men who have sex with men, and those at risk from heterosexual activity. In the cities studied, Holmberg estimated there to be 1.5 million injection drug users, 1.7 million gay and bisexual men, and 2.1 million at-risk heterosexuals. He said that among them, there are 565,000 prevalent and 38,000 incident HIV infections and about 700,000 prevalent and 41,000 new HIV infections each year in the United States. Approximately half of all estimated new infections occur among injection drug users, and most of them occur in northeastern cities, as well as Miami and San Juan. Most prevalent HIV infections are still found in gay and bisexual men, although incidence--except in young and minority gay men--is much lower than it was 10 years ago. High prevalence of HIV in at-risk heterosexuals suggests that transmission among this group could increase. "Aileen Getty Comes Clean" POZ (05/96) No. 14, P. 48; Lewis, Judith Aileen Getty, granddaughter of the late oil tycoon J. Paul Getty, says having AIDS has improved her life by saving her from former problems. She had been in seven institutions, had seven miscarriages, was anorexic, and a self-mutilator. Although Aileen says she would rather not be in the public eye, she feels a responsibility to do so, to battle the public's fear of AIDS. She says AIDS can make drug addiction worse, that she turned to cocaine to deal with the disease. After almost dying from toxicity and weakness, Aileen decided that life was worth living, even with alcoholism and AIDS. She first tested positive for HIV in 1985, and was diagnosed with AIDS shortly after. Aileen did not disclose her disease until 1991, after Magic Johnson went public. She later revealed that she had contracted HIV through an extramarital affair, which ended her marriage with Christopher Wilding, son of Elizabeth Taylor and Michael Wilding. Aileen is now engaged to be married, and remains close to Taylor. Aileen has become an AIDS activist, helping the Los Angles-based Homestead Hospice raise money for shelters for people with AIDS. She has two sons, whom she has an open relationship with about her disease. "AIDS: Paper Trail" Advocate (05/14/96) No. 707, P. 14 The failure of New Orleans officials to fill out application forms for federal grant money will result in the city losing more than $1 million in AIDS funding. Marty Rudegeair, hired as a consultant to help the city with the paperwork, says city officials were not interested in completing the application, so he did it on his own time at the last minute. The episode has angered AIDS activists, as it is the second of its kind this year.