Subject: U. S. Researcher Makes Impassioned Case For Treating AIDS as Venereal Disease 
Date: Published: 6/21/91 (104 lines)
Source: Wall Street Journal. Copyright Dow Jones & Co. Inc.

    U. S. Researcher Makes Impassioned Case
    For Treating AIDS as Venereal Disease
    ----
    By Marilyn Chase
    Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal

    FLORENCE -- U. S. researcher William Haseltine made an
 impassioned case for treating AIDS as a "world-wide, lethal
 venereal disease."
    At an international conference on acquired immune
 deficiency syndrome here, Dr. Haseltine presented details of
 how the deadly virus pierces certain membranes in the genital
 tract.  While AIDS can be and still is transmitted by infected
 blood and shared needles, Dr. Haseltine said:  "We must
 recognize that AIDS is primarily a heterosexual venereal
 disease.  It can be transmitted from fully healthy men to
 fully healthy women" via the mucus-rich membranes that line
 the human mouth and genito-anal tract.
    The statements by Dr. Haseltine, a researcher at
 Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, have helped to revive
 questions about the possibility that "deep kissing" could
 communicate the virus.  But many, if not most, scientists feel
 that this is a very remote risk, unlikely in the absence of
 mouth sores.
    Dr. Haseltine's group at the Dana-Farber institute
 presented several reports here at the Seventh International
 Conference on AIDS saying that certain large, easily infected
 human cells can become mass producers and reservoirs of new
 viruses -- sometimes churning out as much as 10 to 20 times
 the amount of virus normally produced by infected white blood
 cells of the immune system.
    These cells, called dendritic Langerhans cells, make up
 only 1% of human cells vulnerable to the AIDS virus, Dr. 
 Haseltine said.  But once such cells are commandeered and
 infected by the deadly virus, he said, they produce 80% of
 the AIDS viruses in the body.
    Dr. Haseltine urged drug and vaccine developers to pay
 attention to these cells in their research because "it's
 possible {they} may be the primary site of sexual infection."
 And, he said, "Once infected, the game is almost lost."
    Separately, Janet Harouse of the University of
 Pennsylvania presented a report on a starchy substance that
 permits the entry of the AIDS virus into the cells of the
 brain and nervous system.  Conference delegates praised the
 work for illuminating an alternate door for the virus to
 enter the body.
    Separately, Luc Montagnier, a French researcher at the
 Pasteur Institute in Paris, came to this Italian city to
 elaborate on a new theory about how the AIDS virus massacres
 infection-fighting white blood lymphocytes known as T4 cells.
    Jean-Claude Ameisen and colleagues from the Pasteur
 Institute labs in Lille, France, said in April in the journal
 Immunology Today that the normal cycle of cell death and
 rebirth might be, in effect, deregulated by the AIDS virus
 when it scrambles normal immune signals.
    In a process known as apoptosis, Dr. Ameisen said, he
 believes the virus primes cells for a kind of mass suicide,
 first disabling and then decimating them as sentries of the
 human immune defense system.
    However, Dr. Montagnier's main focus remains his
 conviction that AIDS requires mycoplasma, a common infectious
 agent, to turn the HIV virus from a latent into an active
 state.  While AIDS is exacerbated by many infections such as
 herpes or hepatitis, Dr. Montagnier has indicted mycoplasma
 as the chief accomplice in cell deaths caused by AIDS.  
    When challenged to produce data on several HIV patients he
 is treating with antibiotics in his clinic, Dr. Montagnier
 acknowledged that only two patients' immune cells improved --
 and that was during combined treatment with antibiotics plus
 AZT.  
    "We're going back to the lab," he said, in a quest for
 better antibiotics to add to this regimen.
    Asked about the Pasteur Institute's overall new findings,
 another French researcher, Willy Rozenbaum, was supportive
 but philosophical.  "We don't know what this changes for
 patients," he said.
    Finally, there were two hopeful notes sounded by different
 U. S. labs:
    -- California researcher Jay A. Levy yesterday unveiled a
 new factor he says might stop HIV growth by blocking RNA, the
 virus's genetic material.  Dr. Levy, of the University of
 California at San Francisco, calls the new factor "CD8
 factor" for the white blood lymphocytes that secrete it.
    "Now that we know that the cells act at the RNA level,"
 said Dr. Levy's post-doctoral fellow, Karl Mackewicz, "we can
 {perhaps identify agents} that we could use to treat
 patients."
    -- Emilio Emini of Merck, Sharpe & Dohme Research
 Laboratories, a unit of Merck & Co., joined the small but
 growing corps of researchers now able to immunize animals
 against the AIDS virus.  He and colleagues at Repligen Corp. 
 created a monoclonal antibody against the virus.  One
 chimpanzee was immunized with the antibody, and one was left
 unprotected.  Both animals were then injected with the virus.
 The immunized chimp remained healthy, but the control animal
 came down with the HIV infection six weeks later.

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