San Francisco Chronicle - Thursday June 8, 1989
Randy Shilts, National Correspondent

Dr. George Rutherford, director of AIDS activities for the San Francisco Department of Public Health, said 59 percent of men infected with the human immunodeficiency virus had developed acquired immune deficiency syndrome within 10 years of their infection.

An additional 18 percent had AIDS-related complex, and 3 percent suffered from lymphadenopathy, a condition that often precedes an AIDS or ARC diagnosis.

Only 20 percent of the men who had been infected with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) for 10 years or longer were without symptoms of immune dysfunction, Rutherford said.

The research from the San Francisco Hepatitis Cohort Study, which is widely regarded as the most important epidemiological study in AIDS research, traces the development of AIDS in a group of gay men who participated in a hepatitis vaccine trial between 1976 and 1980.

Samples of the men's blood, frozen and stored in freezers at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, have been invaluable to researchers in tracing the spread of the virus.

The high rate of infection among the 6,779 men who have participated in the vaccine study has also given the San Francisco Cohort, as it is known, another distinction: It has a higher rate of AIDS than just about any other group of people in the world.

As the men have fallen ill with AIDS, the study has given the best indication of how long it takes the AIDS virus to do its dirty work in infected people. From year to year, the growing numbers of men who participated in the study have been the centerpiece of AIDS epidemiology presented at the annual AIDS conferences.

"Every year it's the same, only worse - you just change the numbers," said William Darrow, a CDC researcher who helped start the study in 1983.

Members of the audience sometimes whisper to each other and read other papers during the presentation of studies at these conferences, but the packed chamber fell silent when Rutherford released new data showing that increasing numbers of the HIV-infected grow ill with each year of the infection.

Rutherford concluded his 15-minute talk by noting that the high death rates were among people who did not take advantage of new antiviral drugs and the preventive treatments now available. Research into such treatments, Rutherford added, might be a "more promising" avenue of research, given the San Francisco experience.

When Rutherford was done, the audience filed out quietly.

"This is what it's all about, isn't it?" said one woman. "All those people dying."

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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