Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 1984. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
Associated Press - April 20, 1984
The researchers cautioned that the findings did not prove the new virus was the cause of the disease, acquired immune deficiency syndrome, but they are optimistic that they are on the right track.
"I think it looks very good," said Dr. Donald Francis, coordinator of laboratory work on AIDS at the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta.
Dr. Malcolm Martin, a virologist at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in Bethesda, Md., said there was a need "to push very hard and learn more about it."
The discovery of the cause of AIDS is a necessary first step that could vastly speed the development of a treatment or a vaccine for the disease, which is marked by the failure of the body's immune system.
Dr. Martin, who visited French researchers last week, said they had found the virus, which they call lymphadenopathy virus, or LAV, in 11 patients. Six of the patients had AIDS and five had the immune disorder lymphadenopathy, the pre-AIDS disease whose sufferers have not yet developed all the opportunistic infections found in victims.
"I'm convinced it has a role in AIDS," Luc Montagnier, head of the French researchers at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, said in a telephone interview. "But we have to convince the scientific community."
Found in 80% of Victims
In the most recent tests, the French have found evidence of the virus in 80 percent to 90 percent of American AIDS patients whose blood samples were sent to Paris by the Centers for Disease Control, Dr. Martin said. Ninety percent of Americans with the pre-AIDS disease also carried the virus, Dr. Martin said.
Many viruses are found in patients wit the disease, whose broken-down immune systems leave them prone to infection, Dr. Martin said. But one argument that the virus identified in France is the cause of the disease is that the virus appears in patients with pre-AIDS disease.
Dr. Francis of the disease center said further persuasive evidence was that the virus attacked precisely the white blood cells that are defective or missing in AIDS patients. These cells, called OKT4, or helper T-cells, are where the new virus grows and reproduces, Dr. Francis said.
"The French work is very exciting because the virus kills OKT4 cells very rapidly," Dr. Francis said. "As far as we can tell, that is AIDS - destruction of the T helper cells."
The virus is different from the human leukemia virus that Dr. Robert Gallo of the National Cancer Institute and others have suggested is a possible cause of AIDS, according to both Dr. Martin and Dr. Francis. Dr. Gallo, who has argued that the leukemia virus that he calls human T-cell leukemia virus, or HTLV-1, is a likely cause of AIDS, was unavailable for comment yesterday.
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