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In the tests, injections of the vaccine, called Remune, will be added to standard combination drug therapy for HIV, the AIDS virus. Such drugs can halt reproduction of HIV in infected cells, but do not eradicate the virus from those who are infected. Remune is intended to be a therapeutic vaccine, to stimulate the immune system to destroy HIV-infected cells. The study aims at determining whether Remune will keep the levels of HIV in the blood suppressed longer than anti-HIV drug therapy alone, and thwart progression of infection to AIDS. Vaccines are routinely given to prevent polio and many other infections. If the tests are successful, Remune would be the first therapeutic vaccine for any disease to work in those already infected. But the vaccine is not expected to cure AIDS

A sound public health plan is in place nationally to combat further spread of the mosquito-borne West Nile virus, which caused an outbreak of encephalitis in New York City last year, federal health officials said here today. ''We may see some cases here and there this year,'' but no one knows when and where the West Nile virus will strike, said Dr. Stephen Ostroff, who is coordinating the West Nile effort for the Department of Health and Human Services. When the West Nile virus was first detected in the New York City outbreak last fall, ''there were a variety of federal agencies that were very concerned about bioterrorism, and some conducted investigations at that time,'' said Dr. Ostroff, an epidemiologist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta

Bacteria beneath the long fingernails of nurses have been linked to the deaths of babies in an intensive care unit in a hospital in Oklahoma City, federal and Oklahoma health officials said yesterday. Epidemiologists who investigated the outbreak of bacterial infection at Children's Hospital found that about half of the 16 deaths from Jan. 1, 1997, to March 12, 1998, were apparently due to contamination from the long fingernails. No deaths from the bacteria have been reported since the hospital imposed measures like requiring that nurses in the neonatal intensive care unit have short nails, Dr. William R. Jarvis, head of the hospital infections program at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said in an interview

The scientists will be testing a highly controversial and seemingly far-fetched theory that holds that an oral polio vaccine, used in vaccine trials in what was the Belgian Congo in the 1950s, might have been made with chimpanzee tissue that might have been contaminated with an ancestor of the AIDS virus. The Wistar Institute, a research center in Philadelphia, made the vaccine and has kept a few drops of material used in its preparation frozen since 1957. After the AIDS and polio vaccine theory was first raised in 1992, Wistar appointed an independent committee of scientists to look into the questions. The committee recommended testing the vaccine. But Wistar never carried out the tests, it said, because of a lack of scientific interest. By early next month, the material will be carried by hand to the participating laboratories. There, scientists will begin a number of tests aimed at detecting any AIDS-related virus and determining which kind of animal tissue was used to make the vaccine. The focus is on tissue from chimpanzees because they carry a simian virus that is believed to be the ancestor of HIV-1, the virus responsible for the overwhelming majority of AIDS cases in the world

By cultivating marijuana and testing the most promising of its more than 100 ingredients, a British pharmaceutical company hopes to develop drugs for a variety of ailments, a company official told the first national conference for health professionals about the medical uses of marijuana. The privately owned company, GW Pharmaceuticals Ltd. of Salisbury, England, is 'trying to turn an illegal plant into a pharmaceutically regulated product' by developing cannabis-based medicines that are not smoked, Dr. David C. Hadorn, the company's North American medical director, said. Melanie C. Dreher, the nursing school's dean, said the conference was needed because thousands of Americans use marijuana medically even though it is illegal in most states. Voters in at least seven states (Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, Oregon and Washington) have approved initiatives intended to make marijuana legal for medical purposes. But many doctors are afraid to recommend it because the federal government has threatened to prosecute them

By cultivating marijuana and testing the most promising of its more than 100 ingredients, a British pharmaceutical company hopes to develop drugs for a variety of ailments, a company official said at the first national conference for health professionals about the medical uses of marijuana. The privately owned company, GW Pharmaceuticals Ltd. of Salisbury, England, is ''trying to turn an illegal plant into a pharmaceutically regulated product'' by developing cannabis-based medicines that are not smoked, said Dr. David C. Hadorn, the company's North American medical director. Melanie C. Dreher, the nursing school's dean, said the conference was needed because thousands of Americans use marijuana medically even though it is illegal in most states. Voters in at least seven states (Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, Oregon and Washington) have approved initiatives intended to make marijuana legal for medical purposes. But many doctors are afraid to recommend it because the federal government has threatened to prosecute them

The drug is Plavix, which helps prevent blood clots. Three million people have taken Plavix, which is also known as clopidogrel, since Bristol-Myers Squibb first marketed it two years ago. Doctors have been prescribing Plavix in the belief that it is safer than a pharmacologically related drug, ticlopidine or Ticlid. Ticlid can reduce the number of infection-fighting white blood cells to dangerously low levels in about 1 percent of users and apparently produces TTP in about 1 of every 1,600 to 5,000 patients. Now a team led by Dr. Charles L. Bennett of the Veterans Administration Healthcare System in Chicago has linked Plavix to 13 cases of TTP. Eleven of the cases are scheduled to be reported in the June 15 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine. Two probable cases were identified after the report was submitted, said a co-author, Dr. Charles J. Davidson of Northwestern University

Injections of the vaccine, called Remune, will be added to standard combination drug therapy for HIV, the AIDS virus. Such drugs can halt reproduction of HIV in infected cells, but do not eradicate the virus from those who are infected. The study aims at determining whether the vaccine will keep the levels of HIV in the blood suppressed longer than anti-HIV drug therapy alone, and thwart the onset of AIDS proper. The vaccine, developed in the late 1980s by Dr. Jonas Salk, the polio vaccine pioneer, is derived from HIV that is grown in test tubes and then killed by chemicals and irradiation. It is later mixed with mineral oil as an adjuvant aimed at boosting its power to stimulate the immune system

In the tests, injections of the vaccine, called Remune, will be added to standard combination drug therapy for HIV, the AIDS virus. Such drugs can halt reproduction of HIV in infected cells, but do not eradicate the virus from those who are infected. Remune is intended to be a therapeutic vaccine, to stimulate the immune system to destroy HIV-infected cells

In quitting the Senate race last week, New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani discovered that choosing a therapy for prostate cancer was a far more daunting effort than he had expected. Giuliani said he had to focus entirely on the decision, letting his immediate political future fall by the wayside. Making crucial decisions in one's own care has become increasingly complex. Tests now detect certain diseases such as prostate cancer earlier, increasing chances for a cure. Treatment choices are wider. Yet, for prostate cancer, doctors may not know which treatment is best. Giuliani's is a case in point. His father died in 1981 at 73 of prostate cancer. The full facts in the elder Giuliani's case are not known. But in that era, prostate cancer usually was not detected until it had spread and was well beyond any hope of cure. It also was an era when doctors decided the treatment, and few patients questioned them