Faculty Bibliography

The new retrovirus does not pose any unknown danger and is ''no reason for panic'' about a new AIDS epidemic, Dr. [Robert C. Gallo] told the more than 6,300 scientists and health workers at the Third International Conference on Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome. The Nigerian virus was found chiefly because the discovery of the AIDS virus drove his team to look for others. He said: ''I bet we don't find it anywhere'' outside of Nigeria. 'In and Out of Man' With respect to the AIDS viruses, Dr. Gallo said his ''guess was that they had infected primates and other animals for milennia'' and that many had ''gone in and out of man.'' He explained that often the retrovirus infected a small number of people, probably in rural areas, but not enough to sustain a chain of human infection for any substantial period of time. Those who were infected by such retroviruses may have died of the infection without spreading it to others or died of some unrelated cause, Dr. Gallo said

''It is not just a political issue,'' Mr. [Eric D. K. Melby] said, noting worry also about ''the costs of caring for'' victims of the disease. He said the national leaders were concerned that money spent on treating AIDS patients was ''a significant drain or competing source for scarce funds in developing countries.'' Dr. Jonathan Mann, who heads the World Health Organization's AIDS program, said that ''if the progression of the disease isn't stopped soon'' in some African countries, AIDS could have dire economic and political consequences in the next few years. Dr. Mann stressed, ''That is not the stage where we are at now.'' Need for More Data 'Critical' ''It's such a critical issue,'' Dr. Mann said. ''If you don't know how many people are being infected you cannot know whether your program is having any impact and whether the investment is good or not.''

The idea of co-factors in the development of AIDS-related diseases has been greatly stimulated by an epidemiological observation about a cancer of the skin and blood vessels called Kaposi's sarcoma. Hitherto rare and tending to strike older men, Kaposi's sarcoma now occurs frequently among homosexual men with AIDS, while it is relatively uncommon among patients who became infected through intravenous drug use or contaminated blood transfusions. Earlier this month British scientists reported finding the first evidence that genetic differences make some people more susceptible than others to infection with the AIDS virus or, when infected, to development of disease. Dr. Anthony J. Pinching and his team in London found that people with one inherited form of a protein called group specific component appeared to be less vulnerable to the AIDS virus and that people with a second variant of the protein are highly susceptible to the virus. Proof that some co-factors exist for AIDS will not necessarily tell people infected with the AIDS virus what they most want to know: how to avoid developing the disease. Still, in the absence of a cure, such knowledge could be useful. If the presence of other infections facilitates the spread of the AIDS virus, for example, then AIDS virus carriers would do well to avoid any behavior that might expose them to those microbes

Now, for example, researchers can identify the genetic make-up of a virus, remove parts and then rearrange them to try to compare the virulence of the new strain to that of others. Scientists have used this technique of genetic engineering to try to unravel the mysteries of the influenza virus. Scientists actually have had more success in showing the reverse phenomenom of virulence - that some strains of viruses mutate to become weak enough not to cause disease, yet are potent enough to stimulate the body's immune system. This phenomenon, called attenuation, is what scientists use to make the vaccines that protect against polio, yellow fever, measles, and German measles. The attenuated polio virus used in polio vaccines, for example, still infects and multiplies within the human, but does not attack the spinal nerve cells to cause paralysis. Scientists are comparing the strains of the polio vaccine virus with those that produce the paralyzing disease to analyze the molecular differences. Researchers are using similar methods to analyze the AIDS virus

Because his heart was healthy and he and his doctors did not want to waste it, the organ was transplanted into a third person, 38-year-old John Couch of Yardley, Pa. Surgeons attached the heart ''piggy-back'' to Mr. Couch's ailing heart. He had been waiting for a transplant since last fall, according to Dr. William A. Baumgartner, who directs the heart-lung transplant program at Johns Hopkins. ''The recipient will be able to speak to his donor, and if they do well that will be great,'' Dr. [John Wallwork] said. ''If they do badly - just supposing the heart-lung recipient lives and the person who he gave his heart to dies - how is he going to feel? That is one of the reasons I haven't done it, the hidden emotion in it.'' Dr. [Joel Cooper] said the cystic fibrosis patient ''could have kept his own heart'' with the experimental lungs-only transplant technique that his team has used in three patients since last November. All are doing well, Dr. Cooper said, adding that ''if current trends continue'' doctors may be able to avoid the extra risk of rejection he said the cystic fibrosis patient faces because he received a new heart as well as new lungs

NEW YORK - In what is believed to be a medical first, a healthy human heart was taken from a living person and transplanted into another human, doctors in Baltimore said Tuesday. The donor, a 28-year-old man whose lungs had been destroyed by cystic fibrosis, then received the heart and lungs of an accident victim. In the series, completed early Monday, the heart and lungs of the unidentified accident victim who died at the University of Maryland Hospital were removed there, chilled and carried to nearby Johns Hopkins Hospital where they were given to a patient with cystic fibrosis, a common inherited disease. But because his heart was healthy and he and his doctors did not want to waste it, the organ was transplanted into a third person, 38-year-old John Couch of Yardley, Pa. Surgeons permanently attached the new heart ``piggy-back`` to Couch's ailing heart. He had been waiting for a heart transplant since last fall, according to Dr. William A. Baumgartner, who directs the heart-lung transplant program at Johns Hopkins

The researchers reported in the May issue of the Journal of Virology on the differing impacts the strains had on human cells in the laboratory. Two strains, which had been isolated from each of two individuals with AIDS, killed cells in test tubes. A third strain isolated from a child with an early phase of AIDS called AIDS-related complex, or ARC, produced only temporary injury with apparent healing of the cell. A fourth strain, which may have been a mixture of isolates from other AIDS patients, showed both kinds of behavior. (All these viruses were strains of the HIV-1 virus, the one believed to be causing AIDS in most parts of the world. A second, related virus has also been found in West Africa.) Those results were intriguing. But there was no way for the Yale scientists to know if the results would be duplicated in the body. Dr. [George Miller] said in an interview that one way to learn more about the finding in the laboratory would be to develop new genetic recombinants of AIDS virus strains, test their virulence in cells, and then try to map where the recombinations occurred on a molecular level. Scientists using such methods, Dr. Miller said, might ''determine whether a change at one site in the AIDS virus produced a killer strain and whether a change elsewhere in the virus might produce a weakened strain.'' Another way would be to isolate the DNA genetic material from various strains of the AIDS virus and then to cause mutations in different parts of the viruses to determine which mutations produced ''killer versus non-killer life-styles,'' Dr. Miller said

Examining blood samples from homosexual men, some of them AIDS virus carriers and some not, the scientists also found that people with a different genetic variant of the same protein were highly susceptible to AIDS infection and disease

Examining blood samples from homosexual men, some of them AIDS virus carriers and some not, the scientists also found that people with a different genetic variant of the same protein were highly susceptible to AIDS infection and disease. Experts in AIDS and in genetics called the report exciting and of immense potential significance for the understanding of how the AIDS virus attacks the body and how it might be countered. AIDS is caused by a virus that attacks and destroys key elements in the immune system. AIDS victims suffer from rare and deadly infections and cancers

According to the study, people with the double Gc 2 combination (homozygous for Gc 2) had a greatly reduced chance of AIDS virus infection, even when they had sexual intercourse with partners known to be virus carriers. Those with the double Gc 1f combination were far more likely to have been infected and to have become severely ill. Lesser effects were discerned in people who had one Gc 2 or one Gc 1f subtype in combination with others, but the scientists said the implication of such mixes needed more study. Nor was the implication for AIDS vulnerability of the Gc 1s subtype clear, they said. For instance, in a study of 7,000 Caucasians in Minnesota, the Gc 1f was present in 15 percent of subjects; Gc 1s in 57 percent; and Gc 2 in 28 percent. In that Minnesota study, 2.3 percent of subjects carried the double Gc 1f combination, which has been linked to greater susceptibility to AIDS; 32 percent carried the double Gc 1s combination and 8 percent the double Gc 2 combination, the one that appears to confer particular protection from AIDS. Finding the Gc link to AIDS was surprising, said Dr. Keith E. Nye, a member of the team, because he started out by looking at two other components of blood. Dr. Nye, an immunochemist who had worked with Gc for five years, said that Gc unexpectedly appeared in his tests and that he noted ''an odd'' pattern in the presence of various types of Gc in samples from the first few AIDS patients