Washington Blade - July 12, 2002

HONG KONG (AP) -- The renowned director of a New York City AIDS research center plans to set up an institute in Hong Kong to try to prevent the deadly disease from spreading in Asia. Dr. David Ho, the scientific director of the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center in New York, has agreed to establish and head an HIV/AIDS center at the University of Hong Kong, said Pian Leung, a university spokeswoman. The Hong Kong center will be a sister institute of Ho's New York center. Ho was one of the researchers who pioneered the drug cocktail therapy to treat AIDS and was named Man of the Year by Time magazine in 1996. The new institute aims to develop an HIV vaccine and provide advice to Asian nations, particularly China, Leung said. No opening date or budget has been fixed yet, she said. Chinese officials have said about 850,000 people on the mainland are infected with the HIV virus, which causes AIDS.

Lawsuit from AIDS organization accuses Glaxo of price gouging

NEW YORK (AP) -- The AIDS Healthcare Foundation, a nonprofit care provider for AIDS patients, filed a lawsuit July 1 accusing GlaxoSmithKline of abusing the patent system and price gouging on three of its drugs. Filed in federal court in Los Angeles, the suit seeks $66 million in damages -- triple the amount the foundation has spent on Glaxo drugs in the past four years at its 12 U.S. clinics that treat about 12,000 people annually. The suit also wants Glaxo to lower its prices on AIDS drugs. The foundation believes Glaxo misrepresented its importance its establishing AZT and says the patent should be declared invalid. Cesar Portillo, a spokesman for the foundation, said it began investigating Glaxo's patents after numerous failed attempts to get the company to reduce prices and donate money to its AIDS efforts. GlaxoSmithKline spokeswoman Nancy Pekarek said the company's patents are valid and its pricing policy is fair.

Consumer group fears condom rules will cut quality

BARCELONA, Spain -- New proposals being considered for manufacturing condoms could reduce safety and threaten global efforts to curb the AIDS epidemic, a consumer watchdog warned this week. London-based Consumers International fears standards being discussed for plastic condoms, which are designed for people with latex allergies who cannot use regular condoms, could leave more people exposed to unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV/AIDS. Consumers International also plans to call for labeling changes because the group believes size makes a difference. Instead of medium, large and extra large sizes, CI wants circumference and length measurements listed on the condom packaging to ensure a better fit. "It's obvious that if you label them large or extra large, vanity will lead many men to buy a larger size than they know they need," Julian Edwards, the director general of CI, said ahead of the start of an international conference on AIDS.

HIV in spinal fluid may help predict mental decline

NEW YORK -- In people with AIDS, having high levels of HIV in the fluid that surrounds the brain and spinal cord increases the risk of developing memory and concentration problems, the results of a new study suggest. Spinal fluid levels of HIV "may help to identify some HIV-infected individuals who are likely to develop problems with memory and concentration," Dr. Ronald J. Ellis, the study's lead author, told Reuters Health. Ellis and colleagues at the University of California, San Diego, studied 139 people who were infected with HIV. The participants underwent memory and concentration testing, as well as spinal fluid HIV level testing, at the start of the study and again at least six months later. Of patients who had initially normal mental function but who had higher levels of HIV in the spinal fluid, 26 percent developed mental problems, compared with just 6 percent of participants with lower levels, the investigators reported in the journal Archives of Neurology.

Hepatitis C doesnÆt increase AIDS risk for HIV patients

BARCELONA, Spain -- People with HIV who are also infected with hepatitis C do not have an increased risk of developing or dying from AIDS, American scientists said. Doctors at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore said the liver infection does not decrease the response to anti-AIDS drugs or speed the progression of the illness. "There is no difference in the risk of dying," Dr. Richard Chaisson told a news conference before the start of the 14th International AIDS Conference last week. Chaisson and his colleagues monitored the health and response to treatment of 1,955 HIV patients treated at the hospital. The study was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Chaisson said his team found no evidence that hepatitis C should be a barrier to treating patients with HIV. They also found no significant differences in AIDS-defining illnesses or risk of death between patients with both infections and those with only HIV.

From staff and wire reports

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