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From: werner@aecom.UUCP (Craig Werner)
Newsgroups: net.motss,net.med
Subject: Re: Re: AIDS transmission (not easy to come by)
Message-ID: <1937@aecom.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 10-Oct-85 03:22:21 EDT
Article-I.D.: aecom.1937
Posted: Thu Oct 10 03:22:21 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 13-Oct-85 03:30:32 EDT
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Organization: Albert Einstein Coll. of Med., NY
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Xref: linus net.motss:1892 net.med:2363


	Currently there are 500 health workers in the US being followed by the
CDC after needle sticks in the US. Not one has yet developed AIDS, or AIDS-
related complex (ARC). Of those tested, none has tested Antibody Positive
for HTLV-3.
	There are about a dozen cases of health workers getting AIDS in the
United States, but these people all turned out to have other risk factors, so
probably didn't get AIDS through work.
	The oft-cited case of the English nurse who injected herself with
a substantial amount of arterial blood from an AIDS patient was no normal
needle stick.  She developed generalized Lymphadenopathy several weeks after
the incident, which later got better. I have not seen any antibody data to
determine whether she was actually infected by HTLV-3 (also called LAV - for
Lymphadenopathy Virus). However, even though this is a symptom of AIDS and
ARC, several other things can cause it, and in the absence of the data, one
can't say she ever had AIDS at all.
	The heterosexual transmission of the disease seems to be much more
facile from men to women than from women to men.  I swear I saw a reference
that said that only 2 cases in NY are definitely ascribed to female-to-male
heterosexual contact (ruling out IV drug abuse - which transmits female-to-
male quite well.) However I can't find it now, but I remember being incredulous
at the time.
	No known cases are ascribed to transmission by the virus in saliva
or tears. For one, it is in those fluids in very small amounts, and in only
a small minority of people with AIDS.
	There is no case of a child catching AIDS from its mother after the
first month of life (and that wording just hedges on the fact that it is
probably an infection in-utero).  That is probably the best indication of
the virus' relative non-infectability.

-- 

				Craig Werner
				!philabs!aecom!werner
                 "What do you expect? Watermelons are out of season!"