Researchers from the Netherlands report that Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia (PCP) prophylaxis can be safely stopped in HIV-infected patients on highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) who have CD4 T cell counts greater than 200 cells/mm3.
Thomas C. Greenough, MD, of the University of Massachusetts Medical School, and others report the decline of CD4 T cells in a male long-term nonprogressor with only nef-deleted forms of HIV. The patient shows signs of potent antigenic stimulation.
Josiah D. Rich, MD, of Brown University School of Medicine, and colleagues report 3 cases of false HIV infection diagnosis by plasma viral load testing. Two of the cases were falsely detected by branched-chain DNA plasma viral load assays, with the other case detected by reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction plasma viral load assay.
National Institutes of Health (NIH) researchers find evidence of HIV replication in 26 patients receiving HAART with sustained viral loads of less than 50 copies/mL. Half of the patients were also receiving intermittent interleukin-2.
Using a new, nonradioactive, endogenous labeling technique, Mark Hellerstein, MD, and colleagues conclude loss of CD4 T cells in progressive HIV disease is due both to a shortened survival time and a failure to increase production of circulating CD4 T cells.
Researchers from the Washington University School of Medicine provide proof-of-concept for a "Trojan horse" strategy of inducing cell suicide in HIV-infected cells. Adita M. Vocero-Akbani, MD, and colleagues engineered an apoptosis-promoting caspase-3 protein, called TAT-Casp3.
A study conducted by Patrizio Lorenzi, MD, of Switzerland, and others indicates that most HIV-infected mothers and about half of their children receiving combination therapy during pregnancy develop one or more adverse effects.
Peter J. Ungvarski, RN, of the Visiting Nurse Service of New York, cites a study of 202 HIV-infected patients that finds that approximately 40% of their prescriptions have incorrect dosing schedules, suboptimal dosages or protease inhibitors ordered as monotherapy.
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) promulgates regulations requiring pharmaceutical companies to provide physicians with specific information on the effects of medications on children. The regulations also permit the FDA to require pediatric testing of certain drugs under "compelling circumstances."
The FDA approves nevirapine, a non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitor (NNRTI), for use in HIV-infected children.
A study in American Journal of Respiratory Critical Care reports cigarette smoking may suppress the percentage and absolute number of CD4 and CD8 T cells in the bronchoalveolar lavage fluid in HIV-infected patients, which may in turn cause a decrease in lung defenses against infection.
An advisory panel for the FDA recommends the approval of Panretin gel as a second-line therapy for patients with AIDS-associated Kaposi's sarcoma.
Researchers from the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) report that HIV-infected women may have a higher risk of progressing to AIDS than HIV-infected men with the same viral load.
Researchers report some laboratory success of a vaccine that attacks HIV at a vulnerable moment of its infection cycle. Researchers at the University of Montana developed antibodies in mice that attack HIV just as the virus is in the process of fusing with target cells.
Researchers at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and Targeted Genetics Corp. isolate cytotoxic T lymphocyptes (CTLs) capable of recognizing the HIV Gag protein from HIV-infected patients and grow them in culture to produce billions of CTLs capable of attacking HIV-infected cells. The CTLs are infused into patients, but the antiviral effects are temporary due to the gradual decline of the transferred CTLs.
The New England Journal of Medicine publishes data showing that a Caesarean section alone cuts the risk of HIV transmission in half. An infected woman who has both a Caesarean and zidovudine (Retrovir) treatment has only about a 2% chance of infecting her child.
Preliminary data for 1998 indicate that 1947 people in New York City died from AIDS during the year, a 26% decline from 1997 and the fourth consecutive year of decline in the city.
French researchers at the 6th Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (6th CROI) in Chicago report the deaths from a rare neurological disease of 2 babies involved in a trial of zidovudine and lamivudine (Epivir) among pregnant HIV-infected women. The babies who died were not infected with HIV.
Katherine Anastos, MD, of Catholic Medical Centers in New York City, reports at the 6th CROI that HIV-infected women in the United States are not receiving treatment early enough. Women have viral levels that measure 20% lower than viral levels in men for any given stage of HIV infection.
Researchers find that giving mothers standard medicines for just a week cuts the risk they will pass on the virus during childbirth by more than one third. The study shows that to work at all, the medicine must be given when labor starts, and it must be given to both mother and child for a week following birth.
Data presented at the 6th CROI show 93% of antiretroviral naive patients had viral loads less than 400 copies/mL after 20-24 weeks of treatment with ABT-378 (lopinavir) and a small dose of ritonavir (Norvir).
Data presented at the 6th CROI suggest that the investigational drug amprenavir (Agenerase) has a different resistance profile from other protease inhibitors.
T. Zhu, MD, and colleagues at the University of Washington report at the 6th CROI the discovery of HIV lurking in the resting CD4 T cells of some people who remain HIV seronegative.
At the 6th CROI, an analysis of mutations associated with antiretroviral drug resistance shows that viral rebound in patients on combination treatment with indinavir and at least one nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitor (NRTI) was often associated with evidence of resistance to the NRTI only in a majority of those patients.
Data presented at the 6th CROI show efavirenz (Sustiva) achieves and maintains viral suppression in a greater percentage of patients than combinations including indinavir (Crixivan).
Men who rapidly develop AIDS have a more pronounced rate of increase in viral load over the first 3 years of infection, reports University of Pittsburgh researcher John Mellors, MD, in a presentation to the 6th CROI.
Data show that 58% of nelfinavir (Viracept) failures are able to achieve viral loads less than 500 copies/mL (by bDNA) for a median of 60 weeks with a second-line regimen of ritonavir, saquinavir (Invirase), stavudine (Zerit) and lamivudine. Patients with baseline viral loads greater than 30,000 copies/mL, however, are less likely to preserve levels below the 500-copy level.
Preliminary study results from an ongoing clinical trial suggest that using delavirdine (Rescriptor) with the protease inhibitor indinavir significantly decreases viral load when used in a triple or quadruple combination with zidovudine and lamivudine in HIV-infected patients.
Progenics Pharmaceuticals, Inc. announces the discovery of an anti-CCR5 monoclonal antibody that potently blocks HIV replication in the laboratory. Designated PRO 140, the antibody inhibits HIV at concentrations that have no apparent effect on the normal function of CCR5.
Samuel Baron, MD, and colleagues at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston determine that saliva appears to kill HIV-infected mononuclear leukocytes through hypotonic disruption. Saliva is devoid of many salts that are normally found in body fluids, making it hypotonic, which results in the inactivation of HIV-infected white blood cells.
A team of researchers led by Beatrice Hahn, MD, of the University of Alabama at Birmingham, announces that the major strain of HIV almost certainly crossed over to humans from a subspecies of African chimpanzee Pan troglodytes troglodytes.
Bruce Walker, MD, of Massachusetts General Hospital, and others report on a new strategy that would intermittently remove drug therapy for short periods of time. Such therapy interruptions, the researchers speculate, might act as a vaccine.
Studies suggest that about 20-30% of individuals newly infected with HIV are carrying forms of the virus that are already resistant to 1 of the 13 antiretrovirals. The FDA gives fast track designation to the new fusion inhibitor pentafuside (T-20).
The New England Journal of Medicine reports on 2 cases of HIV-infected patients on prolonged indinavir treatment who developed renal atrophy.
Researchers now report that both infant and adult monkeys vaccinated with a live, nef- and vpr-deleted form of an HIV-like virus have developed AIDS from the vaccine itself.
NIH researchers begin a study in which HIV-infected patients discontinue drug treatment. Only patients able to suppress the virus in blood to undetectable levels for more than a year are enrolled. Two of the patients in the discontinuation trial were subjects whose blood was found free of the virus after scrutinizing more than 360 million cells.
Researchers at Washington University Medical School find that levels of HIV replication are positively correlated with elevated production of myostatin.
A steady decline in his CD4 T cell count has forced a US man infected with nef-deleted HIV—the same deletion used in a prototype AIDS vaccine—to begin taking antiretroviral therapy after 15 years of asymptomatic infection.
Philip Keiser, MD, of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas, and associates find that HIV-infected patients who receive protease inhibitors spend fewer days in the hospital and have lower overall health care costs compared to patients who do not take the drugs.
The Genotypic Antiretroviral Resistance Testing study concludes that genotypic testing with expert advice in patients failing antiretroviral therapy was superior to no genotypic testing, as measured by short-term viral load responses.
A study from the Multicenter AIDS Cohort Study (MACS) demonstrates declines of at least 50% in the incidence of HIV dementia, toxoplasmosis, cryptococcal meningitis, progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy and primary central nervous system lymphoma since the introduction of HAART in 1996.
The FDA approves a supplement to the Amplicor HIV-1 Monitor Test extending the lower limit of quantification from 400 to 50 copies/mL.
Three new studies published in The Lancet indicate that short-course zidovudine treatment in HIV-infected pregnant women can significantly reduce the number of infants who contract the virus from their mothers.
In an article in The Lancet, doctors in Scotland warn against a possible interaction between sildenafil (Viagra) and protease inhibitors.
Swiss researchers report that HAART lowered the mortality rate and HIV progression in a study of nearly 2700 patients. The findings, reported in The Lancet, indicate that it is more beneficial to commence treatment with a cocktail of at least 3 drugs, instead of administering one drug after the other.
Scientists report in the journal Science that the process by which memory cells are produced requires at least 5 cycles of cell division.
The National Academy of Sciences' Institute of Medicine finds that marijuana probably helps a number of ailments, but because smoking it is also hazardous, it should be used sparingly.
Virology studies show that a change in the virus occurs when syncytium-inducing strains capable of entering cells via the CXCR4 coreceptor appear in the HIV-infected patient.
Review of the Phase III trial data of HIV-1 immunogen (Remune) is postponed by the Data Safety Monitoring Board until virologic data from the trial are also available for review.
The FDA grants approval for expanded prescribing information on the use of lamivudine in infants, children and adolescents and broadens lamivudine's indication for use in combination with other antiretroviral agents for the treatment of HIV infection in adults and children.
Doctors in Spain report in The Lancet on 14 HIV-infected men receiving protease inhibitors for at least 9 months who describe an inability to achieve or maintain an erection, reduced sex drive and problems ejaculating. None of the subjects had less-than-normal levels of testosterone; however, lab tests did detect higher-than-normal levels of estrogen in the blood of 5 subjects.
The MACS study that has followed a group of 5622 homosexual and bisexual men nationwide to determine if, when and why they contracted HIV reaches its 15-year milestone on March 31.
Abbott Laboratories submits an application to the FDA seeking permission to produce a new capsule form of ritonavir, which has been in limited supply because of problems related to production.
Chiron Diagnostics announces initiation of the premarket approval application process for the Quantiplex HIV-1 RNA 3.0 Assay (bDNA).
Health Care Finance Administration reverses an earlier statement that allowed the state of Texas to deny Medicaid reimbursement for Serostim (somatropin), based on a loophole in the US Social Security Act.
Itraconazol (Sporanox) Injection, a new intravenous treatment for several difficult-to-treat, potentially life-threatening fungal infections, is approved by the FDA.
Chronic diarrhea as a drug adverse effect has become an important problem for patients with advanced HIV disease, according to a report in Clinical Infectious Diseases.
Trimeris, Inc. files with the FDA an Investigational New Drug application (IND) for T-1249, its second therapeutic in a new class of anti-HIV drugs that block the entry of the virus into cells.
Amprenavir is granted accelerated approval by the FDA for use in combination with other antiretrovirals for the treatment of HIV infection.
The NIH allocates $6 million for the creation of a bank to store the brains of people with AIDS who have died. The Manhattan Brain Bank will distribute tissue samples to approved research facilities nationwide.
Experts at the 3rd International Conference on HIV Infection and Nutrition report that fat redistribution now affects more than 50% of patients.
If HAART for HIV infection is interrupted, patients experience a rapid rebound in viral load to pre-HAART values. But, say French clinicians including Christine Katlama, MD, a 1-month interruption may not have a deleterious effect on therapy once it is restarted.
HIV can hide in the body for as long as 60 years, even when patients take HAART, according to Robert Silicano, MD, and colleagues at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.
The Swiss HIV Cohort Study concludes that stopping primary prophylaxis is safe in HIV-infected patients who are receiving antiretroviral therapy and who have sustained CD4 T cell counts of at least 200 cells/mm3 that represent a minimum of 14% of total lymphocytes.
Louis J. Picker, MD, of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, and colleagues report that gag-specific CD4 memory T cells are detectable in most individuals with active, progressive HIV infection, whereas the levels of such cells decline in patients who maintain continuous viral suppression with antiretroviral therapy.
New in vitro studies show that HIV resistant to nelfinavir is less fit than virus resistant to other HIV protease inhibitors. These studies may explain clinical observations that patients failing first-line HAART regimens including nelfinavir are more likely than those failing other regimens to respond well to subsequent therapy if such failures are caught early.
A report from the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that, save for those who are extremely immunocompromised, all HIV-infected children and young adults should receive the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine.
The FDA approves the first home test kit for HCV, Home Access Health's Hepatitis C Check, which will enable users to take their own blood sample and send it in anonymously to be tested.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announces that only 6500 people out of a possible 1 million have been notified that they may be at risk for infection with the hepatitis C virus.
In a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers Zhi-Qiang Zhang and Ashley Hasse, MD, report that HAART may regenerate the follicular dendritic cell network.
A report in Clinical Infectious Diseases suggests that discontinuing lamivudine in persons co-infected with HIV and hepatitis B may cause serious flares of hepatitis B.
AIDS becomes the world's deadliest infectious disease in the last year, overtaking tuberculosis and moving up to fourth place among all causes of death worldwide, according to the World Health Organization.
An independent Data Safety Monitoring Board recommends ending the Phase III trial of HIV-1 immunogen because clinical differences were not observed between placebo and treatment groups and were unlikely to be observed in the near term.
New data indicate that adults over 50 are increasingly at risk for HIV infection. A study from the CDC suggests that older people are much less likely to have protected sex than younger people, primarily because they do not see themselves at risk.
A study at NIAID of patients stopping HAART has enrolled 18. Ten have gone without their drugs long enough to produce results; in all of them, the virus has rebounded.
The Clinton administration releases new guidelines to ease the availability of marijuana for medical research.
Researchers at the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center report that HIV can be recovered from 8 patients whose viral load had remained unquantifiable from 2-3 years. They suggest it will take at least 7-10 years of HAART to eliminate the reservoir and they have doubts that it is possible.
Doctors at Yale University report patients using methadone and nevirapine can develop symptoms of methadone withdrawal unless their dose of methadone is increased.
In a review of different salvage regimens, Roy Gulick, MD, reports at the 2nd International Workshop on Salvage Therapy for HIV-1 Infection that viral suppression to fewer than 400 copies/mL was achieved in only 20-40% of patients, a sharp contrast to success rates of up to 90% for first-line therapy.
A study published in Psychosomatic Medicine reports the probability of progressing to AIDS during a 5.5-year study period was 2 to 3 times higher for HIV-infected men with more than average stress or with less than average support than for those below the median on stress and above the median on social support.
A study in the Journal of Immunology suggests that some human major histocompatibility complex proteins may slow or hasten the speed at which HIV-1 progresses.
Abbott Laboratories announces a $335 million alliance with Triangle Pharmaceuticals, Inc., a North Carolina firm that will allow Abbott to market complete HIV regimens.
A report presented at the Third Annual National AIDS Malignancy Conference recommends the use of HAART along with chemotherapy when treating HIV-related non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.
Veronica Miller, MD, from the JW Goethe Universitat, Frankfurt, presents results from a study of the effects of treatment interruptions in subjects with previous failure to multiple treatment regimens. The majority of patients' HIV reverts to wild-type with a better virologic response upon re-administration of multidrug rescue therapies. The patients, however, lose substantial numbers of CD4 T cells in the process.
Investigators report in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism on evidence that a number of metabolic abnormalities found in HIV-positive women may be unrelated to the use of protease inhibitors. Hyperinsulinemia and truncal adiposity have been observed in HIV-infected women prior to initiation of protease inhibitor therapy.
British doctors report in The Lancet the case of an HIV-infected patient who died while receiving sildenafil, ritonavir and saquinavir. The patient had no history of nitrate drug use, hypertension, diabetes or family history of ischemic heart disease. However, he had a 30-year history of smoking and currently smoked 30 cigarettes per day.
Data from the Johns Hopkins HIV clinic show that 63% of patients taking their first protease inhibitor containing regimen fail to suppress their viral below 500 copies/mL at one year. The charts of 114 patients who had experienced virologic failure were reviewed. Among this group, 242 unique antiretroviral regimens were identified, and each patient had an average of 9.4 regimen events (defined as a new drug regimen or drug holiday lasting at least 2 weeks). Only 3 patients (2.6%) shared an identical sequence of events.
Patient selection and dosing begin in the Phase II clinical trial of pentafuside. The trial will assess the antiviral activity and long-term safety of pentafuside when used in combination with other antiretroviral drugs.
The in vitro data presented at the 3rd International Workshop on HIV Drug Resistance and Treatment Strategies suggest that tipranavir, the first in a new class of nonpeptidic protease inhibitors, is active against strains of HIV that are highly resistant to all 4 approved protease inhibitors.
ViroLogic, Inc. announces the commercial availability of PhenoSense, the company's rapid phenotypic HIV drug resistance assay.
Visible Genetics Inc. announces the introduction of a new product known as TruPrep that makes genotyping possible for HIV-infected patients with viral load levels as low as 60 copies/mL.
Gilead Sciences submits a New Drug Application to the FDA for adefovir dipivoxil. The FDA informs Gilead Sciences that its planned trade name, Preveon, should not be adopted, as it is in conflict with another recently approved pharmaceutical product.
During the 1st International Workshop on Adverse Drug Reactions and Lipodystrophy in HIV, Kees Brinkman, MD, proposes that lipodystrophy may be caused by mitochondrial dysfunction and that the mitochondrial toxicity of NRTIs might be an important factor in the pathogenesis of HAART-related lipodystrophy.
Trimeris Inc. and Hoffmann-LaRoche conclude an agreement for the full-scale clinical testing and development of Trimeris's 2 novel anti-HIV fusion inhibitors, pentafuside and T-1249. Roche will market the compounds worldwide.
According to the NIH, a single dose of nevirapine taken orally by the mother while in labor, followed by a dose for the baby 3 days after birth, reduces the transmission rate by half compared to a similar short course of AZT.
Scientists at Merck gear up to begin human clinical trials of 2 AIDS vaccines in healthy uninfected individuals by the end of the year.
Data from the Pediatric AIDS Clinical Trials Group and from the Women and Infants Transmission Study provide compelling evidence that the maternal HIV viral load is the prime risk factor for vertical transmission.
The American Society of Anesthesiologists cautions people who use herbal medications to stop taking them before surgery.
A report in The Journal of the American Medical Association finds that cases of perinatal AIDS peaked in 1992, and declined 67% by 1997, including an 80% decline in HIV-infected infants and a 66% decline in HIV-infected children ages 1 to 5 years.
A report in Archives of Internal Medicine Online reveals that over 50% of the HIV-infected patients who started a drug regimen that included protease inhibitors in an academic clinical practice did not achieve durable suppression of viral replication.
French researchers report in The New England Journal of Medicine 10 cases of alopecia associated with indinavir therapy. Doctors at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center note that shorter treatment time for high-risk cervical cancer in HIV-infected patients is associated with better health outcomes.
The number of people dying from AIDS in the United States is still falling but much more slowly, according to the CDC. The decline in the AIDS mortality rate—the number of persons who die as a percentage of those who have the disease—was 20% in 1997-98 compared to 42% in 1996-97.
The FDA approves stavudine and didanosine (Videx) for first-line treatment of people infected with HIV.
A UK team of investigators proposes that HIV-infected women who develop protease inhibitor-related lipodystrophy may also have a genetic predisposition to polycystic ovary syndrome.
French scientists report in AIDS the emergence of zidovudine-associated mutations and multidrug resistance mutations in antiretroviral naïve patients treated with the combination of stavudine and didanosine.
A report in The Journal of Infectious Diseases concludes that lamivudine is an effective treatment for HIV and hepatitis B virus in individuals co-infected with the viruses.
The FDA approves the use of stavudine and didanosine with protease inhibitors and the non-nucleoside analog efavirenz.
A preliminary report in Neurology shows that cerebral metabolite abnormalities, which have been linked to HIV dementia, may be reversed if HAART is started early.
Research reported in The Lancet suggests that using azithromycin as prophylaxis for Mycobacterium avium complex (MAC) offers extra protection against PCP infection, in addition to standard PCP prophylaxis.
The US Department of Health and Human Services awards $3.9 million in planning grants in an effort to increase HIV/AIDS care to African-Americans and people in rural and underserved regions.
Researchers from the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center report finding a 16.3% prevalence of HIV variants with known resistance-conferring genotypes to any antiretroviral drug in a group of newly infected patients from New York and Los Angeles.
Researchers from the University of California at San Diego report in The Journal of the American Medical Association an analysis of 141 patients finding 3 HIV-infected patients with a more than ten-fold resistance to one or more AIDS drugs. More than one quarter of the patients showed reduced susceptibility to at least one drug. The range of the reduction was from 2.5 to 10 fold. The patients, who were enrolled from 1989 to 1998, were located in San Diego, Los Angeles, Dallas, Denver and Boston.
Research from Spanish investigators suggests that individuals who are depressed and who have a perceived lack of social support have difficulty adhering to antiretroviral drug therapies for HIV infection.
Investigators from the US Naval Medical Center in San Diego report in the Annals of Internal Medicine that the flu vaccine is extremely effective in HIV-1-infected individuals.
Data presented at the 39th Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy (39th ICAAC) show that 42% of patients on the combination of zidovudine, lamivudine and amprenavir were below the level of quantification as compared to 3% of those receiving zidovudine, lamivudine and placebo. Those receiving amprenavir were more likely to experience nausea, vomiting and rash when compared to those receiving placebo.
Data presented at the 39th ICAAC compares 2 protease-free drug combinations containing stavudine and didanosine, with either lamivudine or nevirapine, to a combination of stavudine, didanosine, and indinavir. At 48 weeks, virologic and CD4 T cell responses were similar for the 3 arms. When the arms were compared using a viral load test with a 50 copies/mL cutoff, the lamivudine, stavudine and didanosine arm did not perform as well, nor did persons with the highest baseline viral loads do as well on the protease-sparing arms when measured by the more stringent 50 copies/mL cutoff.
Anthony Fauci, MD, reports that all the patients in the NIAID treatment interruption study had viral rebounds. The virus reappeared in 3 to 5 weeks for the majority of subjects. However, the virus was resuppressed by restarting HAART. Another study by Martin Markowitz, MD, of the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center tested 4 recently infected patients who went off antiretrovirals after 3 years of therapy. The virus again reappeared in the patients after 14 to 26 days without treatment.
Researchers, led by Peter Kim, PhD, from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, report in Cell that they have identified 8 molecules that could keep HIV from fusing and infecting normal cells.
A new 48-week study is announced at the National Conference on Women and HIV/AIDS that will compare differences between the sexes in HIV treatment.
A study published in AIDS Research and Human Retroviruses finds that HIV viremia can be reduced (but not completely suppressed) for an extended time with hydroxyurea (Hydrea) and didanosine.
A new study in AIDS indicates that adding ritonavir to indinavir in a twice-daily dosing regimen increases the pharmacokinetic profile of indinavir.
A retrospective study conducted by UK researchers finds that HAART delays the onset of Kaposi's sarcoma treatment failure in patients with HIV.
A case of a patient taking ritonavir and saquinavir and a small dose of ecstasy was reported. The effect of the illicit drug lasted for an extended period of time. In addition, the patient experienced a near-fatal reaction to small amounts of GHB.
U.S. Bioscience halts clinical trials of the antiretroviral lodenosine because 1 patient died and others exhibited signs of potential liver or kidney damage.
A study in The Journal of Infectious Diseases finds evidence for simultaneous epidemics of HIV and human herpes virus 8 infection in the US during the early 1980s.
An estimated 4 million Americans are infected with the hepatitis C virus, with between 20% and 60% of the nation's 2 million prisoners being infected.
An early access program to provide ABT-378/r to a limited number of patients outside of clinical trials begins.
The CDC announces it will provide supplemental support to 5 trial sites in VaxGen's US Phase III trial of AIDSVAX. The CDC will contribute approximately $2 million annually to the selected sites over the next 4 years.
According to a new model reported in Nature Medicine, scientists propose that HIV replicates in multiple, hard-to-abolish, local bursts, whose size is very sensitive to relatively small changes in blocking efficiency. They emphasize that it is highly unlikely that HIV can be eradicated with current drugs.
A panel convened by the FDA recommends that the full agency not give Gilead Sciences permission to market adefovir, a new AIDS therapy intended for use in patients with resistance to existing drugs. The panel cites safety concerns and adefovir's modest antiviral effect.
Researchers from Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia report that they are able to detect residual viral RNA in the peripheral blood plasma of 22 patients with viral loads of less than 50 copies/mL, suggesting that viral replication is taking place at low levels in these patients.
Scientists at the National Eye Institute report that patients with stable cytomegalovirus retinitis who experience increases in CD4 T cell counts as a result of HAART may safely discontinue CMV treatment.
A study published in the Journal of Medical Virology suggests that rapid genotypic resistance to lamivudine occurs when the drug is given in combination with zidovudine to HIV-infected pregnant women.
The FDA approves once-daily dosing of didanosine.
James Sosman, MD, of the University of Wisconsin finds that protease inhibitors affect the endothelium, or the lining of the blood vessels, and may present a danger for heart disease.
Research by Ashley Haase, MD, and colleagues show that HIV enters resting cells within 3 days of infection.
Bristol-Myers Squibb sends a revised warning letter to health care providers that expands the number of patients at risk of fatal and nonfatal pancreatitis associated with didanosine.
The FDA approves twice-daily dosing of nelfinavir.
Four men between the ages of 35 and 44 have heart attacks after 2 years of HAART. Although no link has been proven, researchers fear that the life-extending anti-HIV drugs may cause cardiovascular disease.
The Whitman-Walker Clinic and Shiloh Baptist Church Family Life Center Foundation host a 3-day conference on HIV/AIDS and the African-American community.
Barbara McGovern, MD, of the Tufts University School of Medicine, finds that HIV-infected patients taking HAART are at risk for liver disease because of the drugs' potential toxicity.
At a meeting in Philadelphia of the Infectious Disease Society of America, researchers from Massachusetts General Hospital report preliminary findings from 2 patients who were on "structured interrupted therapy." The scientists note that while HIV came back each time the drugs were halted, there were signs the patients' immune systems were fighting to control the virus, with growing success.
Calypte Biomedical Corp.'s "Day Assay" license for its HIV blot assay is approved by the FDA. The assay shows the presence of antibodies to HIV in serum samples within 5 hours.
A recent survey of several hundred homosexual men in West Hollywood reported in AIDS Alert finds that attitudes towards HIV and AIDS are making gay men more at ease with the virus, causing some to return to high-risk sexual situations. One reason for the growing complacency is the advancement in treatment with protease inhibitors.
Researchers from the University of California at Los Angeles, the Rand Corp. and 8 other institutions find that one third of HIV-infected patients in the US forgo medical care because of the time or money it costs them. Minorities, women, drug abusers and those in poverty were the most likely to skip treatment and instead work or spend the money for food and shelter.
The FDA grants fast track approval to VX-175/GW433908, a prodrug of the protease inhibitor amprenavir.
A study reported in AIDS of more than 600 HIV-infected men and women indicates that the women have higher CD4 T cell counts when they develop AIDS and at the time of death compared to men.
A report in The New England Journal of Medicine finds that the combination of efavirenz plus zidovudine and lamivudine had better antiretroviral activity and fewer adverse effects than the combination of indinavir, zidovudine and lamivudine.
A study from researchers at the University of California at San Francisco suggests that bacterial resistance to trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole has increased significantly since 1986, especially among HIV-infected individuals.
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