Jul 16, 2004   | COMMENTS     

BANGKOK — Controversy kicked off a global AIDS conference this week with a dispute over whether abstaining from sex or using condoms is more effective in preventing the disease, according to media reports. Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni said at the 15th International AIDS Conference that he agrees with President Bush’s administration that abstinence is the best way to stop the spread of HIV/AIDS, opening an ongoing debate. Most health experts say the use of condoms is a best frontline defense against AIDS, according to press reports. “I look at condoms as an improvisation, not a solution,” Museveni said. The U.S. government sent only one-quarter as many people to this year’s conference in a move officials said is to save money. But many AIDS experts said it may be linked to the heckling of Tommy G. Thompson, U.S. Health & Human Services secretary, at the last AIDS conference, according to the Washington Post.

Study signals promise for new HIV therapy
WASHINGTON (AP) — Researchers may finally be on track to fight the AIDS virus by blocking a long-elusive target, an HIV enzyme called integrase. An experimental drug that inhibits the enzyme helped to keep the infection in check in monkeys. Far more research is needed to prove if Merck & Co.’s approach really can block this enzyme’s crucial work in helping HIV reproduce and spread. After all, years of attempts at targeting integrase have failed. In a study published last week in the journal Science, Merck reports that an integrase inhibitor dramatically protected monkeys when the drug was given early in infection. The drug also provided some benefit to the very sick. Merck is studying some integrase inhibitor candidates in a few people to see whether the pills seem safe and to check for any early signs of viral suppression. Results, due by early next year, will determine whether larger studies should be performed on the prospective drugs.

Officials testify on lab accreditation problem
Better communication between oversight agencies, more rigorous inspections and stronger whistleblower protection are needed to root out problems at hospital laboratories similar to the faulty HIV and hepatitis tests released by Maryland General Hospital, according to testimony last week at a congressional hearing. At Maryland General, repeated reports from whistleblowers about faulty equipment producing roughly 450 questionable results never made it past the lab director and weren’t shared among agencies responsible for inspecting them, AP reported. The lab continued to produce faulty reports from June 2002 to August 2003 despite warnings from lab workers, according to testimony from former Maryland General lab worker Kristin Turner. “Somebody knew there was something really wrong a really long time ago,’’ she said.

CDC: HIV boom did not follow syphilis outbreaks in two U.S. cities
ATLANTA (AP) — Los Angeles and San Francisco have yet to see the boom in HIV rates that health officials have been fearing ever since the two cities had syphilis outbreaks among gay and bisexual men earlier this decade. Health officials believed the syphilis outbreaks indicated that many gay and bisexual men were abandoning safe-sex practices and that a corresponding surge in HIV cases would soon follow. But large jumps in HIV did not follow. In San Francisco, only 1.9 percent of gay and bisexual men had the AIDS virus in 1998. Although that rate nearly doubled to 3.9 percent a year later, it dropped to 2.4 percent by 2002, the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention said last week. New HIV cases dropped from 4.8 percent of Los Angeles’ gay and bisexual men in 1998 to 4.1 percent in 2002, the CDC said. The CDC explained the findings by saying that only a small number of people overall were infected with syphilis and that in both cities, more than half of the men newly infected with syphilis already had HIV.

Antibiotic-resistant strain of syphilis is spreading
SEATTLE (AP) — A fast-spreading mutant strain of syphilis has proved resistant to the antibiotic pills that are offered to some patients as an alternative to painful penicillin shots. Since the late 1990s, doctors and public health clinics have been giving azithromycin to some syphilis patients because the long-acting antibiotic pill was highly effective and easy to use. Four pills taken at once were usually enough to cure syphilis. But now researchers at University of Washington in Seattle have found at least 10 percent of syphilis samples from patients at sexually transmitted disease clinics in four cities had a strain resistant to azithromycin. The percentage of samples from San Francisco with the mutant strain jumped from 4 percent in 1999-2002 to 37 percent in 2003, with the increase taking place largely among gay or bisexual men with multiple partners.