UCLA FIRSTS Every other Friday, The Bruin will
highlight social, political and scientific advancements that
originated at UCLA and set standards for both the university and
the nation.
By William D. Braxdale
Daily Bruin Contributor
AIDS is the world’s deadliest infectious disease and the
fourth leading cause of death worldwide, according to the UCLA AIDS
Institute.
And many people don’t know they are infected.
“As many as half of the people are unaware of their HIV
status,” said Jeff Fricke, program director for education and
outreach at the UCLA Clinical AIDS Research and Education
Center.
Since its opening in 1983, the CARE Center has helped both
adults and children living with HIV and AIDS, serving as the
clinical arm of UCLA’s AIDS Institute, which oversees funding
and current policy for the study of AIDS.
Additionally, the center facilitates clinical research projects
and integrates research findings with patient care and
teaching.
But UCLA’s involvement with the deadly disease began two
years before.
Photo Courtesy of Lara Jo Regan Dr. Kathie
Grovit-Ferbas works on an HIV vaccine in the UCLA AIDS
Institute. In 1981, UCLA physicians, including Dr. Michael Gottlieb
at the UCLA Medical Center, were the first to publish a report on
AIDS, which was referred to as Gay-Related Immune Deficiency
““ or GRID ““ at the time.
The report found cases of Pneumocystis carinii, a type of
pneumonia in five previously healthy gay men.
From that time, UCLA has been at the forefront of AIDS research
worldwide.
The CARE center, for example, has a team of specialists in such
areas as internal medicine and immunology.
It also provides treatment to reduce the chances of transmitting
HIV to newborns from mothers who have the virus.
In addition to providing the latest treatment options, the
center houses one of the few AIDS clinical trial facilities in the
western United States to treat private patients.
In the research arena, the center has more than two dozen
clinical trials being conducted at any one time.
These tests are often specific to certain groups, including some
that are exclusively for women.
In 1988 the Centers for AIDS Research, a national program, began
at UCLA. The university is currently one of 17 academic and
research institutions across the nation to participate in CFAR,
which promotes basic, behavioral, clinical and transnational
research in prevention, detection and treatment of HIV infection
and AIDS.
This growth continued into the 1990s.
The UCLA AIDS Institute, founded in 1992, receives most of its
infrastructure support from CFAR. The CFAR program emphasizes the
importance of interdisciplinary collaboration among AIDS
researchers.
Because of the work done at the AIDS Institute, a number of
breakthroughs have taken place at UCLA. In addition to being the
first to identify AIDS, UCLA researchers were also the first to
document an HIV-positive infant who managed to clear the virus from
his system.
UCLA researchers reported the case in 1995 in the New England
Journal of Medicine. Born to an HIV-infected mother and exhibiting
evidence of HIV at 19 and 51 days following birth, the child
nonetheless tested negatively for the virus at 11 months. At age 5,
the child was still reported as HIV-negative.
UCLA researchers were also responsible for finding a way to
detect infection earlier in infants born to HIV-infected mothers,
and the first to characterize and clone the second known human
retrovirus. Researchers at UCLA also pinpointed new methods to
treat AIDS’ destructive effects on the brain.
In 1993 animal research done at UCLA contributed to a gain of
insights about the disease. Researchers performed tests on Severe
Combined Immune Deficiency mice with implanted human tissue that
allowed them to study deterioration of the immune system from HIV
infection in shorter periods of time. This was the first time HIV
infection has resulted in immune deficiency in an animal.
The new discoveries allowed researchers to test the safety and
effectiveness of antiviral genes that may slow or stop the
progression of AIDS.
More recent research is being conducted in finding an effective
HIV vaccine. Researchers exposed hidden regions of the AIDS virus
responsible for eliciting antibodies, and believe that they made it
possible for the first “dead” vaccine to induce both
antibody and cellular immune responses to the virus.
And due to improvements in medical treatment of AIDS, the
percent of people dying of the disease has decreased, according to
the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services.
Currently, there have been more than 730,000 cumulative cases of
AIDS in the United States with a fatality rate of 59 percent,
according to the department.
Despite the widespread awareness of AIDS, some people are still
complacent about the disease because they think they aren’t
affected by it, said Tom Donohoe of the UCLA AIDS Education and
Training Program.
Sometimes, this attitude may lead to risky behavior, especially
among college students.
“A lot of UCLA students think they are immune,” said
Lisa Croyden, patient advocate at CARE. “They don’t do
anything to protect themselves.”