The New York Times - June 16, 1983
Lawrence K. Altman

The researchers, who are at Albert Einstein Medical College and Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx, cautioned, however, that much more testing needed to be done to determine whether the adenovirus was, in fact, a cause of AIDS.

The researchers reported, in the June 11 issue of The Lancet, a medical journal, that adenovirus had been identified in 20 AIDS patients, and type 35 had been identified in 17 of the 20 patients. Ten of those 20 patients were reported on in the Lancet article. Tests on the 10 others were done since the report was submitted for publication, Dr. Marshall S. Horwitz, one of the authors, said in an interview yesterday.

Of the 20 patients, 19 were from New York. They were treated at five hospitals: Beth Israel, Bronx-Lebanon, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, Montefiore and North Central Bronx. The 20th patient was from California. Virus Is Identified

The adenovirus has been identified in urine samples sent to the Einstein-Montefiore team by doctors treating AIDS patients. The samples were subjected to vigorous virological tests.

Adenoviruses are a frequent cause of respiratory illnesses as well as a variety of other disorders. The Lancet report adds it to the list of several other viruses for which there is some evidence suggesting an association with AIDS. Among them are those called cytomegalovirus, EB virus, human T-cell leukemia virus. Some researchers have theorized a role for still others such as African swine fever virus.

Federal health officials recently declared AIDS their No. 1 health priority on the basis of the rising number of cases. As of June 7, a total of 1,552 cases of AIDS were reported to the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta since 1981. Of these, 597 were fatal. So far this year, 451 cases have been reported, including 83 deaths.

According to Federal epidemiologists, major risk groups for AIDS include male homosexuals, intravenous drug addicts and Haitians who have moved recently to this country. A few cases have been reported among people who have received blood transfusions or blood products that are used to treat hemophilia, which is a hereditary bleeding disorder.

Because of the hints that AIDS can be transmitted by contaminated blood and needles, researchers have suspected that the disorder is caused by an infectious agent and they have focused their attention on viruses. New Test Is Used

It was a relatively new sophisticated molecular biological test depending on an enzyme called restriction endonuclease that cleaves the virus to produce specific fingerprints that led the Einstein-Montefiore researchers to an important aspect of the finding - identifying the adenoviruses as type 35. There are 41 different types of adenoviruses. Dr. Horwitz said the fact that these particular adenoviruses were related "would have been missed if the samples were sent to a laboratory" where only standard tests were done.

"Because advenoviruses have not been recognized as being associated with AIDS at all, these first isolates are worthy of considerable attention," Dr. Horwitz said. "Obviously we have to look at larger numbers to see if what we found in 20 patients will hold up, and in addition we have to find out what the virus was doing there."

The pattern of adenoviruses as they cause infection has varied with the particular type. Types 1, 2 and 5 are common factors in respiratory infections among children. Also, type 7 has been an important health problem among military recruits, presumably because of reasons of overcrowding. The types of adenoviruses are numbered chronologically, according to the timing of their discovery. The first was discovered 30 years by Dr. Wallace Rowe of the National Institutes of Health, who found them in tonsils removed in operations. Type 35 was discovered in 1974 from a patient who had a kidney transplant.

Patients who receive drugs to suppress their immune systems as part of transplant therapy often suffer from unusual infections. However, adenoviruses have not commonly been identified among such patients. That was one reason, Dr. Horwitz said, that his group, which includes Dr. Pieter J. DeJong, Graciela Valderrama and Dr. Ilya Spigland, has studied these viruses so extensively among AIDS patients.

Further, Dr. Horwitz said his group was prompted to study the adenoviruses because some types cause cancer in rodents, though there is no evidence that adenoviruses cause cancer in humans.

Dr. Horwitz said his team was expecting to receive samples from England as part of its continuing studies to determine whether there was a geographical pattern to infections with adenovirus 35. AIDS cases have been reported from England as well as in Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, and West Germany. West Germany has reported 24 confirmed and 100 suspect cases of AIDS, including six deaths.

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