Subject: LAB NOTES -- --   By Jerry E. Bishop
Date: Published: 10/5/88 37 lines
Source:  Wall Street Journal.  Copyright Dow Jones & Co. Inc. 

    LAB NOTES
    ----  
    By Jerry E. Bishop

[68 lines irrelevant to AIDS have been removed. -- sysop]

    Finding Test Animals
    To Use in AIDS Study
    AIDS RESEARCHERS are keeping an anxious eye on some
 rabbits in Italy.
    A major obstacle in testing drugs and vaccines against
 acquired immune deficiency syndrome, or AIDS, is a lack of
 laboratory animals.  So far, scientists have successfully
 infected only chimpanzees with HIV-1, the human
 immuno-deficiency virus that causes AIDS. But the chimps
 haven't developed the disease.  Attempts to infect mice, rats,
 hamsters, guinea pigs, musk shrews and rabbits have failed.
    Now scientists at three Italian institutions report they
 injected HIV-1 into the abdominal cavities of some rabbits
 after chemically stimulating the tissues in the cavities.  Two
 weeks later the rabbits showed signs of building an immunity
 to the virus, a hint that an infection had occurred.  Signs of
 infection continue to show up several months later.
 Unfortunately, the researchers haven't yet seen any signs of
 the immune deficiency disease, they report in Nature, the
 weekly scientific journal published in London.

[17 lines irrelevant to AIDS have been removed. -- sysop]

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