United Press International - December 14, 1986

The current issue of Physician's Weekly reports that researchers at the Jewish General Hospital in Montreal have detected the AIDS virus and viral antigens -- molecules formed in response to infection -- in the saliva of people infected with AIDS.

According to the report, the number of infected lymphocytes in saliva rose dramatically when the AIDS patients were given parafilm -- a waxy substance -- to chew.

Chewing forced the production of larger than usual amounts of saliva in the mouths of the 54 people tested, 49 of whom showed a marked presence of the virus in saliva, the report said.

Preliminary studies by Dr. Drasko Pekovic concluded that such activities as chewing or erotic kissing can increase the number of infected white blood cells in the mouths of patients with AIDS.

Pekovic, an oral immunologist, said the results of his studies contradict work by many noted scientists in the United States who have ruled out the possibility of transmitting the AIDS virus by way of saliva.

"I was curious to know if cellular lymphocytes contained the virus or not," he said. "Other investigators are reporting more or less different results."

Pekovic said his studies show that HIV (the AIDS virus) levels can rise as high in saliva during erotic kissing and chewing as levels detected in comparable samples of blood and semen.

Noted American scientists who have tested possible transmission of the AIDS virus by way of saliva disagree with Pekovic's results.

"I still go by our data," said Dr. David Ho at UCLA.

While on the research staff of Massachusetts General Hospital last year, Ho studied saliva from 71 AIDS patients and found the virus in only one of the subjects.

"The recovery rate of infectious virus from infected individuals is quite low," Ho said. "We did those studies very carefully and carried out additional studies on other areas of the body, particularly the brain, where we did in fact find the virus in many patients."

Ho's studies were in The New England Journal of Medicine.

Dr. Patricia Fultz, chief of animal model studies at the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, said she also doubts that AIDS can be transmitted via saliva.

"If he tested the samples immediately, he might find it," she said. "But with swallowing . . . the virus would not stay in the mouth very long.

"All of the casual contact studies show that this mode of transmission is virtually nil."

Fultz's study of the presence of the AIDS virus in saliva was published last month in the British medical journal Lancet. She reported then that adding the virus to saliva in a test tube showed that the virus became inactivated.

" . . . Obviously something in saliva inhibits the virus but we have not yet been able to determine what that factor is."

Dr. Philip Fox of the National Institute of Dental Research in Bethesda, Md., speculated that AIDS victims with oral disorders may be at greater risk of incubating infectious virus in the mouth. But he also said that transmission via saliva is minimal. Pekovic charged that U.S. doctors have not been using proper investigative techniques.

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