Subject: Study Says Women With AIDS Die Sooner Than Men 
Date: Published: 6/19/92 (71 lines)
Source: Wall Street Journal. Copyright Dow Jones & Co. Inc.

    Technology:
    Study Says Women
    With AIDS Die
    Sooner Than Men
    ----
    By Marilyn Chase
    Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal

    SAN FRANCISCO -- Women with AIDS die sooner than men with
 the disease, perhaps because of poorer access to antiviral
 therapies, according to a new study.
    In a survey of nearly 10,000 patients, women had a median
 survival of 11.1 months, while men lived 14.6 months, after
 being diagnosed as having acquired immune deficiency
 syndrome.  However, when the female patients were being
 treated on the antiviral drugs AZT or DDI, there was no
 difference in survival.
    The finding of a survival "gender gap" seems sure to
 intensify calls to correct alleged underrepresentation of
 women in AIDS drug trials.  It also highlights a controversy
 over definition of the syndrome in women, who suffer a range
 of AIDS symptoms distinct from men.
    "Access for both men and women to HIV human
 immunodeficiency virus testing and counseling, and early
 monitoring and medical intervention, is needed to help bridge
 the gender gap in survival after a diagnosis of AIDS,"
 concluded the report by George F. Lemp and Sandra Hernandez
 and their colleagues in the San Francisco Department of
 Public Health.  The report appears in today's issue of the
 Journal of Infectious Diseases.
    AZT, made by Wellcome PLC of London, was the first
 antiviral agent to receive marketing approval, in 1987.  DDI,
 made by Bristol-Myers Squibb Co., New York, was cleared last
 fall.  Regulators are expected to clear a third antiviral
 drug, DDC made by Hoffmann-La Roche, for use in combination
 with AZT.  Hoffmann-La Roche is a unit of Roche Holding Ltd.
 of Switzerland.
    Separately, a team of French and U. S. vaccine researchers
 reported clearing a new and important hurdle in animal trials
 of candidate AIDS vaccines.
    HIV may infect its victims either in a free-floating virus
 form or when sequestered like a Trojan horse inside an
 infected human blood cell.  So far, most studies involving
 chimpanzees have exposed the animals only to the
 free-floating virus.  However, researchers have long
 recognized the need to expose test animals to infected cells
 as more of a "real world test."
    Now, in a new report, three vaccinated test chimps
 remained healthy and virus-free after exposure to infected
 cells, while a control animal injected with the infected
 cells became infected.
    Marc Girard of the Pasteur Institute in Paris and Patricia
 Fultz of the University of Alabama at Birmingham and their
 colleagues reported their findings in the current issue of
 the journal Science.  The work was done in collaboration with
 researchers at the National Cancer Institute, Duke
 University, New York University and Transgene S. A. of
 Strasbourg, France.
    The researchers cautioned that protection of the chimps
 was achieved only after repeated immunizations over a
 two-year period, which they acknowledged to be an impractical
 regimen for human use.

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