Retroviruses Conference, Chicago 1999
The 6th Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections, January 31 - February 4 in Chicago, is the largest AIDS scientific meeting of 1999 and provided a complex snapshot of the current state of basic and applied medical science of AIDS. Faster progress in understanding the disease is now being made in many areas, suggesting targets for new treatments. There are promising compounds in the pharmaceutical pipeline, and research with existing treatments is generally going well. But there are serious gaps in applying the new biological knowledge to product development, with most of the new drugs being (hopefully) better versions of existing ones; companies are reluctant to invest in basically new approaches. And much confusion remains concerning the lipodystrophy and metabolic problems which may be side effects of some treatments, especially protease inhibitors--with little agreement yet on the mechanisms of what is happening, what to do about it, or even how to define and describe these problems consistently.We believe that HIV-specific immunity is the most important single research area emphasized at this conference; see "Restoring HIV-Specific Immunity," below, for a summary of a few of the many presentations. We will look at clinical trials, and other treatment research, in our following issues.
Besides HIV-specific immunity, other important areas include:
Other immunity studies, including measurements of the lifespan of lymphocytes in the body, understanding and measuring immunity to particular opportunistic infections, and predictors of response to therapy for opportunistic infections;
Lipodystrophy and metabolic problems, including work by lipid experts at Glaxo Wellcome who have provided data on possible causes which had not been identified before;
Viral drug resistance, including new evidence of the value of providing these test results, with expert virology advice, to physicians;
New long-term data from large clinical trials--both for new drugs, and for new combinations of available ones;
Early information on new compounds just entering human trials;
New information on HIV transmission from mother to child, and on shorter drug regimens to help prevent it;
Virology, especially discoveries of new targets for potential drugs.
And many other important oral and poster presentations which do not fit into a major category.
