United Press International - August 12, 2005
Dan Olmsted, UPI Consumer Health Editor

The words "AIDS" and "cure" seldom share the same sentence, unless to point out that there isn't one for a disease that has killed 25 million and infected that many more. Now breakthrough research at a U.S. university may finally be pointing the way.

Already, AIDS has been turned from a reliable killer into a chronic ailment in many patients, albeit at the price of potent and expensive drugs with serious side effects that must be taken like clockwork and still carry no guarantee.

Now, though, researchers at the University of North Carolina have identified an existing drug for a completely different kind of problem -- valproic acid, used to treat epilepsy -- as the possible basis for eradicating the virus completely from the human body.

"Our findings suggest that eradication of established HIV infection might be achieved in a staged approach," said David Margolis, who led the research team at the University of North Carolina.

"This finding, though not definitive, suggests that new approaches will allow the cure of HIV in the future," he added. "I would like to set scientists on the way to looking for a means to eradicate the virus. That is why I am excited about this. But I don't expect it to happen soon. In the meantime, prevention has to be the key message."

The findings were published in The Lancet, a leading British medical journal. The researchers tested the new approach on four patients, giving them the standard HAART protocol -- highly active anti-retroviral therapy -- plus one more standard drug, plus valproic acid. After three months, latent infection dropped by 75 percent in three patients, a lesser amount in the fourth.

Some researchers hailed the study as a genuine breakthrough, while others said talk of AIDS and a cure still don't belong in the same sentence.

"It is absolute nonsense," Abraham Karpas of the University of Cambridge told Britain's Independent. "They don't understand the biology of the virus.

"We will cure every cancer before we find a cure for HIV. The only way to defeat this disease so far is to prevent infection."

Curing every cancer seemed a long way off this week; the death of ABC news anchor Peter Jennings at 67 was followed by word that 44-year-old Dana Reeve was diagnosed with the same disorder.

Jennings' death was sad but not a surprise, given his obvious ill health when he appeared on TV a few months back to announce his illness. "I was weak," he acknowledged, saying he had once been a smoker, then quit, then started up again after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Reeve's announcement was a shocker, doubly so because she had never smoked. It seemed especially cruel given the steadfast poise she displayed in dealing with the devastating paralysis of her husband, actor Christopher Reeve, who died last year. She said she is optimistic she will beat the disease.

Closer to home, journalistically speaking, a leading activist in the fight against autism also was diagnosed with lung cancer.

Dr. Alan Clark, who with his wife Lujene is a national advocate for a ban on a controversial mercury preservative in vaccines, never smoked. He believes his cancer came from growing up in a home where his parents shared two or three packs of cigarettes daily.

"All these people who are smoking in the house with their kids -- even if they go smoke on the porch -- their kids are exposed to smoke on their clothes, in the furniture, on the carpet," Clark told the News-Leader in Springfield, Mo. "And they need to know the risks they're putting their children through later in life."

Lung cancer is notoriously difficult to catch in its early stages. By the time doctors diagnosed Clark's cancer -- rather than pneumonia, often the first suspect -- it had spread to his brain, backbone and pelvis. He is undergoing chemotherapy.

Clark said he now has another cause: to help build support to raise Missouri state taxes on cigarettes to discourage smoking.

"Don't smoke outside the house, don't smoke inside the house. Always go to smoke-free restaurants -- always," he said.

When we saw Clark last month at an autism rally at the Capitol in Washington, he handed us a piece of paper on which he had neatly calculated the number of mercury atoms to which children's brains could have been exposed in the 1990s from childhood vaccinations. By the time he got done explaining, it made sense even to us.

Clark -- whose quick mind sped him through college and medical school like a real-life Doogie Howser -- has been an invaluable resource to this correspondent in covering autism, and we wish him all the best.

E-mail: dolmsted@upi.com

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