Faculty Bibliography

Scientists have long searched for another Aspirin in hopes of improving treatment for heart disease and other conditions. But several drugs that were initially touted as a 'super Aspirin' failed in rigorous studies. Dr. Christopher P. Cannon, a cardiologist at the Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, said clopidogrel is 'the best news since Aspirin -- this is really a super Aspirin that lives up to its name.' Dr. [Valentin Fuster] said that clopidogrel was not a miracle drug but one like Aspirin and others that collectively have had a significant effect in improving heart disease care

Potentially, Dr. [Salim Yusuf] said, the drug might benefit many patients who are not now taking it. If every American who needed it received it, 50,000 to 100,000 of them might potentially escape heart attacks and strokes, and the lives of 5,000 to 10,000 might be saved each year, said Dr. Yusuf, who directs the division of cardiology at McMaster University. The drug costs $2 to $3 a day. In the syndrome, not enough blood can flow to nourish the heart because the coronary arteries are blocked by fatty deposits from the underlying condition, atherosclerosis. A heart attack can result unless urgent therapy is given. In the United States, people experience about 1.5 million episodes of acute coronary syndrome a year, Dr. Yusuf said. Dr. Yusuf's study, the largest and longest of acute coronary syndrome, involved more than 12,500 patients in 428 hospitals in 28 countries. Half the participants received standard therapy, which includes aspirin; the other half received standard therapy plus one clopidogrel pill a day

Potentially, [Salim Yusuf] said, the drug may benefit a great many Americans who are not taking it. If every American patient who needed it received it, 50,000 to 100,000 of them might potentially escape heart attacks and strokes, and the lives of 5,000 to 10,000 might be saved each year, said Yusuf, director of cardiology at McMaster University

The gene is called p53. Since Dr. [Arnold J. Levine] co-discovered it in 1979 with a British researcher, Dr. David Lane of the University of Dundee, a mutated form of p53 has been identified in about 55 percent of human cancers, including most major ones. ''The p53 gene is the single most commonly mutated gene in cancers of humans,'' Dr. Levine, 61, said at a news conference at the New York Academy of Sciences in Manhattan. Dr. Lane, asked for comment, congratulated Dr. Levine, his friend, for winning the award, but said ''it is clearly a matter of historic record'' that his paper describing the p53 gene was published before Dr. Levine's. Dr. Lane said, ''It would be inappropriate for the prize to be awarded for the discovery of the p53 protein,'' but ''entirely appropriate'' for any other chosen criteria

Dr. [Jonathan S. Reiner], who has taken the one-day training course for the gamma radiation technique, said he would have transferred Mr. [Dick Cheney] to a nearby hospital that offered such treatment if he believed his patient needed it. Many cardiologists not connected with the case have said that by not being irradiated, Mr. Cheney is being subjected to a higher possibility of another angioplasty and hospital stay. But the critics did not say that Mr. Cheney received bad medical care; most said the decision was a tossup in his type of blocked stent. Mr. Cheney could still get the radiation, if needed. After Mr. Cheney, 60, complained to him about ''a little chest burning'' on March 5, Dr. Reiner said he told his patient to go to [George Washington]. There, the doctor inserted a tube into an artery in Mr. Cheney's thigh, threaded it into the coronary arteries surrounding his heart, and took angiogram X-rays that found one end of the stent was nearly blocked in the diagonal artery, which was three millimeters in diameter Using an ultrasound device, Dr. Reiner then examined the blocked stent and said he ''was encouraged'' to find that the affected area was short (one to two millimeters in length) and limited to a specific point in the stent that otherwise was clear. At a news conference just after completing the procedure on March 5, Dr. Reiner said that Mr. Cheney had at least a 40 percent chance of needing another angioplasty within six months because of a second restenosis. But Dr. Reiner said that on Friday a researcher told him that he would soon report a study that showed a 20 percent restenosis rate for Mr. Cheney's type of problem

About 1 percent of Caucasians inherit a double dose of the mutation that usually confers resistance to H.I.V. infection. People who inherit only one dose of the mutation and become H.I.V.-infected often take about two years longer to develop AIDS than infected people without the mutation. Dr. [Rainer Woitas], a specialist in internal medicine with a long interest in hepatitis C, came to his findings in an unusual way. After other scientists in the United States and Europe discovered the mutation's effect in H.I.V. in 1996, Dr. Woitas theorized that it might also play a role in hepatitis C. Dr. Woitas's team confirmed the finding that the double dose form of the mutation protected against H.I.V. infection. But 12 of the 153, or 7.8 percent, in the hepatitis-C-only group had the mutation, and statistical tests showed it was three times more common than expected

Dendritic cells lie in wait, ready to greet and capture invading microbes like H.I.V., the AIDS virus, that enter through the mucosa. The dendritic cells carry the invaders to lymph nodes throughout the body so they can be attacked by CD-4 and other immune cells. H.I.V. attacks and replicates in the very CD-4 cells that are sent to attack it. And as H.I.V.'s navigational guide, the dendritic cells turn into Trojan horses. The newly detected molecule binds to H.I.V., allowing the virus to survive for four days. Otherwise, H.I.V. would die much sooner. One of the enduring mysteries of AIDS is that it takes such a small amount of virus to establish an H.I.V. infection. Dr. van Kooyk's work suggests that the newly detected molecule's protection provides an efficient mechanism for a small amount of H.I.V. to enter, survive and then amplify in large amounts to damage the immune system and create AIDS

Resistance to two or more of the three classes of anti-H.I.V. drugs rose to 5.8 percent in the 1999-2000 period compared with 0.4 percent from 1995-1998, Dr. Little said at the meeting, a major conference attended by 3,500 scientists specializing in H.I.V. and related viruses. Many people develop a flulike illness, acute retroviral syndrome, within weeks to months after becoming infected with H.I.V., and though they seek medical care for the syndrome, doctors often do not suspect that it is attributable to H.I.V. and do not perform an AIDS test. In the study, people newly infected with resistant virus who started any kind of anti-H.I.V. therapy were less likely to suppress levels of the virus to undetectable levels compared to those with nonresistant strains. Also, suppression took longer among those with drug-resistant H.I.V. compared with those with nonresistant virus

Ten years ago, an international AIDS meeting was moved from Boston to Amsterdam, in part because of United States government restrictions on allowing people infected with H.I.V. into the country. But the United States also had restrictions on sending its scientists abroad to such meetings

A similar study by the centers from 1994 to 1998 found that 7 percent of 15- to 22-year-old gay and bisexual men were infected with HIV, [Robert Janssen] said. That study found that 14 percent of blacks were infected, 7 percent of Hispanics and 3 percent of whites. In recent years, about 40,000 Americans have become newly infected each year, with blacks accounting for slightly more than half of the new cases. At the height of the epidemic in the early 1980s, there were more than 150,000 new infections annually. Still, a number of other studies have shown small but significant increases in rates of gonorrhea, syphilis and other sexually transmitted infections. Epidemiologists use such infections as behavior markers for the risk of new HIV infections in a community because of a strong correlation of HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases among infected individuals. Also, sexually transmitted infections can make it easier for HIV to enter the body