Washington Blade - May 10, 2002

WASHINGTON -- President Bush's nominee to head the National Institutes of Health sailed through his Senate confirmation hearing last week, after expressing strong support for federal funding for stem cell research, the Washington Post reported. Dr. Elias Zerhouni, a researcher at Johns Hopkins University, was nominated for the head post of the governmental organization that includes the Office of AIDS Research, which manages the scientific, budgetary, legislative and policy elements of the agency's AIDS research program. Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.), chair of the Senate Health, Labor, Education & Pensions Committee, said the committee was likely to approve Zerhouni's nomination Wednesday and that the full Senate could vote to confirm him by week's end. The Gay & Lesbian Medical Association has said it is taking a wait-and-see approach on Zerhouni.

"Given the anti-gay appointments to the AIDS panel, and the whole administration stance on abstinence-only prevention, we have to keep our eye on what's happening," Maureen S. O'Leary, executive director of the Gay & Lesbian Medical Association, has said.

S.D. men charged with exposing others to HIV

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP) -- Within the last 10 days, three men have been charged in South Dakota under a two-year-old law that makes it a felony to intentionally expose sex partners to HIV. In Brown County, James Lee Woods, 41, of Aberdeen, is charged with four counts involving three other men. William Kenneth Jenigen, 35, is charged with six counts involving three victims. He lived with Woods.

Authorities have encouraged sex partners of either man to be tested for HIV. In an unrelated Beadle County case, Sitanka Huron University freshman Nikko Briteramos, 18, of Chicago, pleaded innocent after a grand jury indicted him on three counts of HIV exposure. Out of his case, Briteramos and three other people have tested positive for HIV. Some 207 people have been tested for HIV so far as a result of that investigation.

HIV targets cells programmed to attack it, researchers say

BETHESDA, Md. (AP) -- Scientists who scrutinized the immune systems of HIV patients have confirmed a long-standing suspicion: The deadly virus targets the very cells programmed to attack it. The findings could help in the design of effective HIV vaccines, and also raise a caution about patients taking a break from drug therapy to boost their natural immune response against the virus.

"This is a sobering paper because it tells us that we have a difficult task ahead if we're going to overcome this virus," said Dr. Anthony Fauci, chief of infectious diseases for the National Institutes of Health. A team of NIH researchers studied immune system cells called CD4 T cells in the blood of 12 HIV-positive people. They found that the DC4 cells that specifically target HIV contained two to five times more HIV than the other cells, a finding that supports the presumption that HIV selectively infects the cells that attack the virus. The findings were published in the journal Nature.

Blacks lead in HIV cases, but not in drug research

SAN DIEGO (AP) -- Minorities account for nearly half of all Americans infected with HIV but are less likely than whites to be included in research on new AIDS drugs, a study shows. The study in a recent New England Journal of Medicine looked at a nationwide sample of patients under care for HIV. Fewer than half as many black patients as white ones tried to get experimental AIDS drugs, which the researchers said suggested "there is less awareness and a more widespread negative attitude about research in minority communities." Dr. Allen Gifford, a researcher with the Veteran Affairs San Diego Healthcare System and the University of California, San Diego, said it's important to include racial and ethnic groups to find out if drugs are metabolized differently or have different side effects. Participants also have access to alternative treatments, he said.

The two-year study surveyed 2,864 HIV patients three times beginning in 1996, two years after the government issued guidelines for including women and minorities in research.

Calif. starts reporting system for HIV cases

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) -- Doctors and laboratories, for the first time beginning July 1, will be mandated to report newly diagnosed HIV cases to public health officials statewide. Health providers will not use the patient's name, but a code mainly of numbers. But patients who receive testing at anonymous centers, where they don't provide their names, won't be subject to the new regulations. The reporting will differ from 33 states that track patients by name confidentially, and will differ from how California tracks 80 other diseases. Only Illinois, Kentucky, Maryland, Massachusetts, Vermont and Puerto Rico use HIV-reporting codes instead of names. Maine, Oregon and Washington have systems in which names of HIV-positive patients are initially reported but later replaced with codes. "We're very pleased with the system we've developed," said Michael Montgomery, chief of the Office of AIDS in the Department of Health Services.

From staff and wire reports

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