Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 1992. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
San Francisco Chronicle - Saturday, October 10, 1992
The people all received blood transfusions from the same man who was later also discovered to be infected with HIV, the AIDS virus. The donor too has also remained a symptomless carrier of the virus, the scientists said.
The researchers from Sydney, Australia, are reporting their puzzling discovery tomorrow in the Lancet, an international medical journal.
It is the first report to suggest that nonvirulent strains of HIV may continue to be nonvirulent after being transmitted to other people, the authors said. But it is not clear whether the donor or any recipients will eventually develop AIDS because the time for progression from infection to disease is so variable.
It is also the first report of blood or blood products from a single donor infecting a group of recipients with all parties remaining free of symptoms and having normal results from all standard tests of their immune function.
The Australian authors said they were reporting the unusual cluster to stimulate other scientists to look for similar cases. Dr. James Curran, a leading AIDS expert at the federal Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, said that the unusually long time the recipients have shown no symptoms ran counter to the usual pattern among transfusion recipients.
In general, the interval from infection to disease is shorter among transfusion recipients than among people who acquire the virus and AIDS through sexual intercourse, he said.
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