JOSH@IBM.COM (Josh Knight) (06/27/90)
Recently Scott (Scooter) Stevens <stevens@uiece.ece.uiuc.edu> wrote: > In a recent issue of Science, a controversy that arose in 1987 was > resurfaced. A young Asian researcher working out of a lab in > California discovered another "Agent" that aided in the pathogenesis > of HIV. This mycoplasma was thought at first to be contamination > due to this researchers' lack of experience and apparent foolishness. > I mean, really, if Luc Montagnier and Robert Gallo (the co-discoverers > of the AIDS virus) hadn't found it by now, it doesn't exist! Right??!! > Please..... Anyway, Montaignier has also recently isolated the agent, > and is jumping on this bandwagon that appears to be a reality now. > The mycoplasma has been isolated from HIV+ and HIV- persons (tests dome > by PCR) and appears to be fatal with or without HIV. Unfortunately, > it also seem to speed up the events that lead to immunodeficiency, > especially in spurring on KS lesion formation. It seems that this > mycoplasma (not exactly a bacterium, and doensn't fit anywhere else > in the taxonomists' evolutionary tree) is sensitive in vitro, and > somewhat in vivo to the tertacycline derived antibiotic-doxycycline. > > I guess only time will tell whether it will be found that this > mycoplasma is the more appropriate agent to be combatted. > There was a Science article on this over a month ago: "Mycoplasmas in the AIDS Spotlight" by Karen Wright in the Research News section, Science, Vol. 248, pp. 682-683, 11 May 1990. The subtitle reads "Luc Montagnier now thinks these microbes may have a role in AIDS -- bringing a measure of delayed vindication to Shyh-Ching Lo, a tenacious young virologist". It seems that Shyh-Ching Lo originally claimed that he had isolated a novel virus, but later concluded it was a mycoplasma. There remains controversy over the origin of Lo's isolate. Exerpts: "In 1986, Shyh-Ching Lo, a young virologist, brought a heap of abuse down on his head when he claimed to have isolated a 'novel virus' in tumor cells taken from AIDS patients with Kaposi's sarcoma. In withering attacks, other virologists said Lo's results, based on work begun when he was at the National Cancer Institute (NCI), simply didn't justify his claims. And Lo, who is now at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, ruefully agrees. 'The data were not very conclusive,' he admits. ..." ... "Many other researchers might have given, up, but Lo persevered..." ... "Predictably enough, Lo had a tough time getting his findings published. 'I forget how many journals turned us down,' he says. One colleague put the figure at half a dozen. But the delay wasn't entirely unproductive. By the time he had persuaded the American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene to publish the first of five papers in 1989, Lo knew the 'VLIA' was a mycoplasma." ... "... The most controversial issue, according to Baseman, has to do with how he obtained his isolate. Lo says he got the isolate by transfecting mouse cells with DNA from an AIDS patient's sarcoma. But only viruses are known to be able to reproduce by transfection, which is one of the reasons Lo initially assumed he had identified a virus. Even simple prokaryotes such as mycoplasmas are thought to be too complex to be assembled by other cells." There was also an article in the NY Times, Friday 22 June 1990, p. A18 by Philip J. Hilts, "Evidence Is Said to Increase On Microbe's Role in AIDS" about Montagnier's remarks at the recently concluded AIDS conference in San Francisco. There remains much controversy about the relevance of the in vitro experiments to the disease in people. The NY Times article has less technical information than the (much older) article in the Research News section of Science. Josh Knight josh@ibm.com