Faculty Bibliography

OBJECTIVE: To investigate possible cross-contamination of laboratory specimens, as suggested by an increased incidence of newly diagnosed patients with tuberculosis, many of whom had all negative smears for acid-fast bacilli and only one positive Mycobacterium tuberculosis culture referred to as 'negative smears, one positive' or NSOP. METHODS: Medical-record reviews were performed for all patients with NSOP results diagnosed at this facility within a 9-month period. Laboratory logbooks were reviewed for all isolates processed; DNA fingerprinting was performed on available isolates. RESULTS: Of 80 patients with NSOP results, 45 (56%) were found to have false-positive cultures resulting from laboratory contamination with H37Ra, an avirulent stock strain of Mycobacterium tuberculosis. CONCLUSION: Laboratory cross-contamination resulted in the false diagnosis of tuberculosis in at least 45 individuals. Use of the Mycobacteria Growth Indicator Tube may have contributed to these contamination incidents by detecting small numbers of contaminating mycobacteria that may not have been detected with less sensitive media

In a new effort to slow the transmission of AIDS from mothers to their babies, the United Nations is starting a pilot program to treat 30,000 pregnant women infected with H.I.V. in 11 countries where the infection is spreading rapidly, United Nations officials said at the 12th World AIDS Conference here today. The program, which will focus on developing nations, mainly in Africa, will offer testing to pregnant women and short-term therapy with the drug AZT during late pregnancy and delivery. Several studies have shown that short-term AZT therapy can sharply reduce the risk of a woman's transmitting H.I.V. to her baby. Each year an estimated two million H.I.V.-infected women worldwide become pregnant, officials of the United Nations AIDS program said. About 680,000 babies were born with AIDS last year, thrusting mother-to-child transmission to center stage at the conference. But as the United Nations program was announced at a news conference, Actup-Paris, a French advocacy group, strongly attacked it as unethical. Protesters argued that the program was far too limited, because it will provide treatment to women only during pregnancy and not afterward. They also criticized organizers for not addressing the fate of the children who will be born free of H.I.V. but whose mothers may soon die of AIDS. About 1.6 million children worldwide lost their mothers to the disease in 1997

Pleas for national leaders to muster the political courage to carry out strong prevention programs to stop the global epidemic of AIDS were sounded at the opening of the 12th World AIDS Conference on Sunday. The world is facing a runaway epidemic and 'it is time to embrace a new realism and a new urgency in our efforts' to overcome complacency about the human immunodeficiency virus that causes AIDS, Dr. Peter Piot, the head of the United Nations AIDS program, said at the conference

Pleas for national leaders to muster the political courage to carry out strong prevention programs to stop the global epidemic of AIDS were sounded at the opening of the 12th World AIDS Conference here today. Saying that the world is facing a ''runaway epidemic'' of AIDS, Dr. Peter Piot, the head of the United Nations AIDS program, told the conference that ''it is time to embrace a new realism and a new urgency in our efforts'' to overcome complacency about human immunodeficiency virus, which causes AIDS. The condom for women, speakers said, was giving women more choice in protecting themselves against H.I.V. More than 18 million such condoms have been sold since 1992. The United Nations has negotiated a program in which four million condoms for women were sold in developing countries last year at a cost of 50 to 90 cents, compared with $2 to $3 in the United States

Pleas for national leaders to muster the political courage to carry out strong prevention programs to stop the global epidemic of AIDS were sounded at the opening of the 12th World AIDS Conference in Geneva, Switzerland, on Sunday

"The Unfinished Presidency: Jimmy Carter's Journey Beyond the White House" by Douglas Brinkley is reviewed

Responding to impassioned pleas from developing countries desperately seeking a vaccine to fight the AIDS epidemic, an ethics panel convened by the United Nations is recommending major changes in the way experimental vaccines are tested in people. Earlier guidelines, intended to prevent exploitation, called for testing any experimental AIDS vaccine in the country where it was made before testing it in a developing country

In certain areas of Africa, one in four adults is infected with the virus that causes AIDS, and around the world the disease now rivals the greatest epidemics of history, according to a United Nations report issued today. In the first country-by-country analysis of the disease, the United Nations said that last year 30 million people worldwide were infected with HIV, the AIDS virus, and that 21 million were in Africa. Countries south of the Sahara account for the world's 21 highest rates of HIV among adults 15 to 49 years old, the most sexually active segment of the population. In 13 of those countries, HIV has infected at least 10 percent of adults, and in Botswana and Zimbabwe, a quarter of adults are infected, a rate that even an expert described as 'shocking.'

GENEVA - In certain areas of Africa, one in four adults is infected with the virus that causes AIDS, and around the world the disease now rivals the greatest epidemics of history, according to a U.N. report issued Tuesday. In the first country-by-country analysis of the disease, the United Nations said that last year 30 million people worldwide were infected with HIV, the AIDS virus, and that 21 million were in Africa. Countries south of the Sahara account for the world's 21 highest rates of HIV among adults aged 15 to 49 years, the most sexually active segment of the population. In 13 of those countries, HIV has infected at least 10 percent of adults, and in Botswana and Zimbabwe, a quarter of adults are infected, a rate that even an expert described as 'shocking.'