Miami Herald - Thursday, December 12, 1985
Herald Staff

Researchers say that the findings may present new difficulties in seeking a treatment for AIDS, and also expands the range of illnesses for which the virus may be responsible.

They also raise the possibility that people who carry the virus but do not show the pattern of life-threatening infections now associated with AIDS could end up with a debilitating or fatal brain disorder years from now. While more than 15,000 Americans have been reported to have AIDS, experts suggest that more than one million people in the United States may have been infected but show no symptoms.

Two new studies directed by researchers at the Harvard Medical School and the National Cancer Institute detected the virus in central nervous system fluids and tissues from a high percentage of AIDS patients with neurological problems affecting them both mentally and physically.

Commenting on the new research in this week's issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, Boston University's Dr. Paul Black warned that the new findings complicate the already difficult fight against AIDS.

He said the brain may provide a special "sanctuary" for the AIDS virus, known as HTLV-3. It may be hard to get rid of it there because many drugs are prevented from reaching the brain by a natural barrier separating the body's blood supply from the central nervous system.

"The special feature of persistent infection in the brain, coupled with the difficulty of bringing adequate concentrations of drugs . . . across the blood-brain barrier, will make eradication of HTLV-3 infection of the central nervous system very difficult, if not impossible," Black wrote in an editorial.

Particularly troubling, but as yet unanswered, is the degree to which initial infection with the HTLV-3 virus may "seed the brains" of individuals who otherwise escape immune system damage, only to trigger chronic central nervous system disease many years later. "That's a big question," Black said in an interview.

He added that while preliminary research had suggested the AIDS virus may grow in brain tissue and cause disease, the new studies indicate convincingly that this occurs with a much higher frequency than previously suspected.

Dr. David Ho, who headed the Harvard study at Boston's Massachusetts General Hospital, said his team had recovered HTLV-3 virus from 24 of 33 patients with AIDS-related nervous system disorders. Doctors had previously found such disorders in perhaps one-third of patients with AIDS, but it had not been known whether this was due to the AIDS virus or other infections that often accompany the disease.

But Ho also found the virus in four patients with nervous system disorders, but who did not show the classic immune system problems normally associated with AIDS, which is short for Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome.

"What this says is that the virus is capable of causing more than immunodeficiency. In the future we ought to keep our eyes open for neurologic problems" in individuals at high-risk of getting AIDS, Ho said.

Researcher Dr. Lionel Resnick, of Mount Sinai Medical Center in Miami Beach, said the virus may be causing the "weird neurological disorders" in AIDS patients. "They're just not with it, and we had no idea what could be causing this," Resnick said.

"What this tells us is that the virus infects neurological tissue," not just the white-blood cells that are the body's first line of defense against disease, he said.

As of Dec. 2, 15,172 Americans were reported to have AIDS, and half of them had already died. Three-fourths of the cases occurred in homosexual or bisexual men, 17 percent in intravenous drug abusers.
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