Faculty Bibliography

The meeting was called after an investigation by epidemiologists at the centers found it likely that a Florida dentist had transmitted the AIDS virus to three of his patients. The dentist, Dr. David J. Acer of Stuart, has since died of AIDS. His are the only known incidents of possible transmission from a health care worker to a patient among the more than 160,000 AIDS cases reported since the disease was discovered in 1981. Concern on Restrictions Dr. Julie Gerberding, a physician at the San Francisco General Hospital who represented the Infectious Disease Society of America, said her group encouraged individual health care workers who perceive themselves to be at risk of infection with the virus to get tested. But she said that her society did not recommend routine or mandatory testing of health care personnel for the presence of infections like AIDS that can be transmitted through contaminated blood. 'Room for Further Improvement' Dr. James Curran, an AIDS expert at the centers, said that improvement in infection control in the last decade was one of the rare bright spots in the AIDS epidemic. But, Dr. Curran said, 'There is room for further improvement.'

In a surprising finding, scientists from Columbia University in New York recently reported that tiny amounts of lead began to migrate within a few minutes after wine was poured into many lead crystal decanters and wine glasses

Wine and alcohol can leach lead from crystal in amounts that increase with time, raising questions about possible health hazards from long-term storage in decanters

Dr. [David G. Bailey] and colleagues then asked volunteers to take felodopine, an experimental drug used to treat high blood pressure, with grapefruit juice and alcohol. Others took it with only grapefruit juice. Then they were tested to measure the felodipine in their blood. As expected, felodipine lowered the blood pressure. Then the researchers wondered whether grapefruit juice had somehow interfered with their laboratory testing system. Again they drank grapefruit juice. 'There was nothing wrong there,' Dr. Bailey said. 'Bingo,' he said. 'We knew right then it was the grapefruit juice because my levels of felodipine were five times higher when I took it with grapefruit juice than when I took it with water.'

Federal health experts estimated that as few as 13 or as many as 128 Americans have been infected with the AIDS virus either by their dentists or surgeons

Doctors must be more vigilant in recognizing and treating asthma, an increasingly fatal disease in the US, federal health officials said

'Medical journals shouldn't be static ' he said. 'They should change. What directions we'll go in are up for grabs.' Dr. [Jerome P. Kassirer] has also helped edit a section of Kidney International, a monthly specialty journal published by Springer-Verlag in New York City. He said that he had learned 'how poorly many supposedly distinguished researchers and clinicians write' and that 'many times I have had to take their papers apart and put them back together again.' 'In trying to make themselves look the best, the journals overlooked the real reason for doing research, which is to advance science and medicine,' Dr. Kassirer said, adding that he 'would not have wanted to be one of the editors' cited

In recent studies, growth of the AIDS virus in laboratory experiments was significantly suppressed by the addition of an amino acid, glutathione, that plays an essential role in the body's system for fighting infection