Searchlight Vol. 3, no. 1

III I Ii 1111IIII 11IIIII Il III IIIIIIIIIIII
5571095.0447.017
January /February 10993

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** " Volume Three, Issue One
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I SEARCHLIGHT
SA P U B L I C A T I O N OF S E A R C H A L L I A N C E

Southern California's Fast Track in AIDS Research

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What's Inside
This Issue...
0 0 GP160 Vaccine Theory.......................................Page 2
S SEARCH Trials At A Glance........................Page 3
ho uP

Gene Therapy: A Potential
Treatment for HIV
by ThomasJ. Magee, M.D.

PFTareigLog Term Suvvl..
SEARCH Trials in Development......................
N otes & Events...............................................
W om en and HIV..................................................Page 5.....Page 5....Page 6

In any discussion of therapeutic intervention in
disease, a physician must
have some model upon
which to guide his or her
plan of attack. This model
is referred to in medicine
as the pathophysiology of
disease (the process or
mechanism through which
disease occurs), and in
HIV disease a definitive
pathophysiology seems to
be missing from most
discussions of its treatment.

One Hypothesis of How
HIV Disease Works
One pathophysiology model
frequently expressed in HIV
medicine is: "HIV kills
through the direct infection
and death of the CD4 cell
population." If this hypothesis is true, one would naturally seek out any mechanism which would inhibit
the infection of CD4 cells.
Although not always explicitly stated, this model is
quite popular and correspondingly, so are the therapies which depend on it:

Hypericin (St. John's Wort),
ozone, hyperbaric oxygen,
hydrogen peroxide,
Acemannan and Aloe Vera
are all believed to crosslink, oxidize or deglycosylate the outer proteins of the
viral particles, rendering
them non-infectious; dextran sulfate, heparin, soluble CD4, soluble melanins
and passive immunotherapy
are all believed to interfere
with the binding of viral
particles to the CD4 recepContinued on page 8...

S SEARCH People-Bob Granado............................Page 7
S Honor Roll of Giving.........................................Page 10
S W omenSEARCH................................................Page 12
S Paul Jabara Research Fund...............................Page 12
What Is A Cure Worth To You?.........................Page 13
0 - yn*,:u",. S'....*," -:.....:.L..-,............
Treatment Briefs...............................................Page 15
Treatment Briefs..............Page 15
0 From The Executive Director............................Page 16
1 Early Intervention.............................................Page 17

Proposed New AIDS Definition
To Include Cervical Cancer
by Henry E. Chang, Clinical Research Specialist

Three illnesses are slated to join the list of
diseases that comprise the current United
States government definition of AIDS,
according to Dr. John Ward, chief of reporting and analysis for The Centers for Disease
Control's division of HIV and AIDS. The
three additional illnesses-pulmonary
tuberculosis, recurrent pneumonia and
invasive cervical cancer-will join 23 other
indicator diseases, including Kaposi's sarcoma, as AIDS defining illnesses. AIDS
activists have agreed that the inclusion of
invasive cervical cancer (an illness specific

to women) to the proposed new CDC definition of AIDS is a step in the right direction,
but falls short of accurately representing the
extent to which gender-specific illnesses
plague women with AIDS. Activists would
like to see such infections as recurring vaginal candidiasis (yeast infection), vaginal
herpes, and pelvic inflammatory disease
(PID) join the list approved by the CDC.
The expanded definition, which is expected

Continued on page 6..