Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, May 1, 1990 TAG: 9005010464
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A/4 EDITION: EVENING
SOURCE: The New York Times
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
The evidence from a small study at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University in New York seems to explain why some babies born to women infected with the AIDS virus develop the infection while others do not.
The researchers are reporting their results today in the journal The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The finding could lead to a promising diagnostic test to determine which pregnant women have the antibodies and opens a new avenue of research into the development of a vaccine against AIDS, the researchers said.
In an interview, Dr. Arye Rubinstein, the chief researcher, said his team had used the finding to make a crude experimental AIDS vaccine that the researchers were testing in animals and that was different from any other one yet developed.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said the findings were important because of their potential to develop immunizations for those who are already infected with the AIDS virus and possibly for those who have not been infected with it.
Because many people with AIDS have a relentlessly downhill course, despite the presence of antibodies to the AIDS virus, many scientists have questioned whether any such antibodies are protective, as they are in other viral diseases.
Fauci said the new findings were in keeping with those from Swedish researchers "who have found the same sort of thing."
The findings also fit in with earlier research indicating that some experimental vaccines can stimulate protective antibodies that seem to protect against a disease resembling AIDS in primates when administered under optimal experimental conditions.
The Einstein team's finding is based on a new test that detects the body's reaction to a tiny portion of the AIDS virus' outer coat, called the principal neutralizing determinant, or PND, which is present in the surface protein known as gp 120.
The test was developed by Dr. Yair Devash when he worked for E.I. du Pont de Nemours in Glasgow. Devash now works for Ortho Diagnostics in Raritan, N.J.
In studying 15 babies born to AIDS-infected mothers, Rubinstein said, the team found that 11 developed infection and four did not.
On further analysis, the team found that three of the four uninfected babies developed antibodies to PND, whereas none of the 11 infected babies did. Two of the 11 infected babies have died.
The body forms antibodies to fight off invading microbes, making a specific antibody for each foreign agent. Devash's test detects a particular type of antibody that binds very tightly to an antigen, is more potent biologically and is known as a high-affinity antibody.
"It's the type of antibody that you want for long-term protection," Rubinstein said.
The researchers said that to their surprise they found no correlation between the status of a mother's immune system and the presence of the high affinity PND.
by CNB