Subject: Medical Experts Still Unable to Explain Cause of Mysterious AIDS-Like Disease 
Date: Published: 8/17/92 (82 lines)
Source: Wall Street Journal. Copyright Dow Jones & Co. Inc.

    Technology & Health:
    Medical Experts Still Unable to Explain
    Cause of Mysterious AIDS-Like Disease
    ----
    By Helene Cooper and Prerna Mona Khanna
    Staff Reporters of The Wall Street Journal

    ATLANTA -- In the first formal summit on a mysterious new
 AIDS-like illness that gained public attention in the past month,
 medical experts said they remain at a loss to explain the disease's
 cause.
    Officials of the Centers for Disease Control, which sponsored the
 conference, said they would meet with representatives of the
 nation's blood banks tomorrow.  But they said they would not, at this
 point, call for additional screening of the nation's blood supply.
    The day-long conference, a pooling of research and opinions by
 leading AIDS researchers, did yield an interesting patchwork of new
 facts about the recently discovered cases, in which patients suffer
 from AIDS-like symptoms but test negative for the human
 immunodeficiency virus that causes AIDS.  
    The 30 cases discovered so far have occurred in a diverse group
 of patients in 15 different states.  That is different, researchers
 say, from the first U. S. cases of AIDS, which appeared in the late
 1970s in "clusters," among high-risk populations in San Francisco,
 Los Angeles and New York.  "It was obvious in the late 1970s that
 there was an AIDS epidemic," said Frederick Siegal, an AIDS
 researcher with Long Island Jewish Hospital.  "I think the contrasts
 with these new cases are rather striking."
    So far, the AIDS-like cases include more older people than is
 typical of AIDS, according to Martha Rogers, chief of the
 epidemiology branch of the CDC's division of HIV and AIDS.  Dr. 
 Rogers said 27% of those afflicted with the AIDS-like disease are
 older than 50, while only 10% of AIDS patients are older than 50.
 Still, she and other doctors stressed that there are too few cases
 to draw any final conclusions.
    Most provocative to some researchers is that roughly half of the
 new cases are people who are not at risk of contracting AIDS from
 blood transfusions, homosexual activity or intravenous drug use.
    But the AIDS-like cases are similar to AIDS in more than just
 symptoms.  Three of the scientists at the conference said they had
 found indications of an enzyme in blood cells from the AIDS-like
 cases that is similar to one found in HIV-infected cells.  But they
 warned it was too soon to tell whether this condition is caused by
 the AIDS virus or some other virus.
    One of those scientists, David Ho, a New York AIDS expert, said
 he needs to continue studying these cells to compare them with those
 of AIDS patients.  He said he expects to know if this is the AIDS
 virus in about a month.  Others, too, cautioned against jumping to
 any conclusions.  "There may be a dozen causes for what we've seen so
 far," said Sten Vermund, chief of Vaccine Trials and Epidemiology at
 the National Institutes of Health's division of AIDS.  
    Officials of the CDC told the gathering of scientists that it
 would not ask for additional screening of blood donors.  James
 Curran, acting deputy director of the CDC, and other scientists said
 that it is too soon and that they have too few cases and too little
 information about the illness to begin routine testing.
    Still, CDC officials will meet with representatives of the
 nation's blood banks tomorrow in Rockville, Md., to discuss the
 safety of the blood supply.  Dr. Curran characterized the meeting as
 "part of the vigilance process.... In order to investigate better
 whether this is transmitted, we need close cooperation of the people
 who monitor the blood supply."
    Last Friday's meeting, which drew close to 200 AIDS experts, came
 three weeks after disclosure of the AIDS-like cases at the
 international Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome conference in
 Amsterdam.  There, researchers suggested that people can get an
 AIDS-like disease without the human immunodeficiency virus believed
 to be at the root of the fatal sex-and-blood-borne epidemic.
    Some researchers expressed concern Friday that the medical
 establishment not divert scarce funds away from AIDS research.  With
 so few reported cases, and with the cause not yet determined, these
 illnesses may not even be related.  "It may just be that we have a
 strange collection of patients sick from various causes," said
 Charles Farthing, a physician at Bellevue Hospital in New York.

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