San Francisco Chronicle - Thursday June 1, 1989
David Perlman, Chronicle Science Editor

The new findings contradict earlier reports that the active AIDS virus stimulates production of detectable antibodies within six months to a year. But blood specialists noted yesterday that other large-scale studies of donated blood samples are showing how blood bank supplies have become virtually free of viral infection.

The report on detection of the AIDS virus that was cultured from the blood of men whose antibody tests were clearly negative is being published today in the New England Journal of Medicine by a large group at the University of California in Los Angeles. UNIQUE GROUP

The researchers pointed out, however, that the men whose blood they sampled were a unique group - homosexual men who, despite all the warnings about "safe sex," willingly state in interviews that they continue to engage in high-risk sex practices.

The Los Angeles researchers studied 133 of those men, all of whom continuously registered negative on the standard tests that detect antibodies to HIV, the human immunodeficiency virus.

In nearly one-quarter of the men, the virus was isolated, grown in laboratory cultures and clearly identified either by the presence of specific viral proteins called P-24 antigens or by a new technique called polymerase chain reaction that amplifies the sub-microscopic genetic material in the core of the virus.

Among the UCLA group's leaders were Dr. David T. Imagawa, Dr. Steven Wolinsky, and Dr. Roger Detels.

QUESTIONS REMAIN

They noted that they are still uncertain whether their findings would apply to all HIV-infected people, nor can they establish whether people who harbor the undetected virus would be infectious.

Four of the infected men who showed no antibodies to the virus had carried the organisms in their bloodstreams for 11 to 17 months until standard antibody tests did show they were positive for infection, while the rest remained negative for as long as 35 months, the report said.

In an editorial commenting on the findings Dr. William Haseltine of Harvard's Dana-Farber Cancer Institute said the report "adds another layer of complexity" to understanding the AIDS epidemic.

The problem of "silent HIV infections" carries at least some "good news," Haseltine said, because it shows that in some people the virus can remain dormant and fail to reproduce far longer than anyone had believed.

Anti-Viral Drugs

This, he said, "suggests that it may be possible to suppress the expression of the virus with combinations of anti-viral drugs and to induce prolonged remissions . . . in seropositive patients."

But the sobering and still-unanswered question, he added, is whether these virus infections could be transmitted through either sexual contact, blood transfusions or organ donations "by those who are silently infected."

Several major studies on the safety of blood stored in blood banks are to be presented next week at the Fifth International Conference on AIDS in Montreal.

Research by Dr. Alan R. Lifson of the San Francisco health department's AIDS Office, by Dr. Michael Busch of the Irwin Memorial Blood Bank, and by Dr. Elizabeth Donegan of the University of California at San Francisco are all expected to discuss new safety findings drawn from analysis of blood samples among homosexual and bisexual men, as well as from thousands of samples stored at blood banks across the country.

Always watch for outdated information. This article first appeared in 1989. This material is designed to support, not replace, the relationship that exists between you and your doctor.

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