Word: viruses
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Researchers have known for some time that people may harbor the AIDS virus without showing symptoms or even producing telltale antibodies. But the duration of such latent infections has been uncertain. Now a study has shown that some people may carry the AIDS virus for three years or longer without its being detected by widely used antibody screening tests. If the results are confirmed, they could mean that latent AIDS infection is more common than was once believed...
...study, reported last week in the New England Journal of Medicine, followed 133 men without AIDS antibodies who continued to engage in high-risk sexual activity. A team led by researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles, found that of 31 who carried the AIDS virus, 27 had not produced antibodies up to three years after the virus was detected. While the study raises questions about the effectiveness of current screening tests, which zero in on AIDS antibodies and not the virus itself, there is a bright side: some infected people may remain healthy for longer than was previously...
...rulers of the Communist world are reaping the results of decades of propaganda aimed at ensuring control in backward peasant societies. During the early days of the cold war, when it seemed that nothing could contain the virus of Communist expansion, pundits attempted to assure the West that most Marxist regimes took power only with the force of outside arms. On its own, Communism took root only in benighted countries like czarist Russia and feudal China. The more advanced countries of Eastern Europe -- Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Poland -- had the Marxist-Leninist system thrust upon them on the point of a Soviet...
This last major threat in the U.S. blood supply may soon be greatly reduced. After six years of research, scientists at Chiron, a genetic-engineering firm in Emeryville, Calif., have developed a test for the presence of a non-A, non- B hepatitis virus in blood samples. According to papers published last week in the journal Science, trials have shown that Chiron's test is highly reliable. It can now help eliminate the virus from the blood supply. The inexpensive test (about $2 per blood sample) is expected to be approved by the Food and Drug Administration this year...
...initial breakthrough was to isolate a viral protein from blood samples taken from patients with non-A, non-B hepatitis. By cloning large quantities of the protein, the company was able to develop a test to detect its presence in blood. Chiron called the pathogen the "hepatitis-C virus." In clinical studies done at the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control and laboratories in Italy and Japan, blood samples from patients thought to have non-A, non-B hepatitis were screened using Chiron's test. At least 80% of the samples tested positive for the hepatitis...