Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome

The student with shaggy hair hanging low over his eyes, his head pulled turtle-like into a leather jacket, was plainly embarrassed by his ignorance. Not until three months ago, when he got back the results of his blood test, had the 22-year-old art student at a Beijing university heard the term "HIV." None of his friends knew how to use condoms or had any idea why they should. "By the time they realized, it was too late," said the student, who asked not to be named.

Cynthia Davis, one of Los Angeles' best-known HIV/AIDS activists, has logged 580,000 miles on her Camry station wagon and replaced the engine twice in her decadelong campaign of using dolls to educate young and old about the deadly disease. Her latest stop was at Westchester High School a few days before Christmas. As usual, Davis brought along her Dolls of Hope: hand-stitched pieces made by AIDS awareness groups around the world.

Until the end, Christine Maggiore remained defiant. On national television and in a blistering book, she denounced research showing that HIV causes AIDS. She refused to take medications to treat her own virus. She gave birth to two children and breast-fed them, denying any risk to their health. And when her 3-year-old child, Eliza Jane, died of what the coroner determined to be AIDS-related pneumonia, she protested the findings and sued the county.

Giving selenium, an antioxidant mineral sold as a dietary supplement, to HIV patients modestly reduced the amount of virus in their blood, according to a study published Monday. Patients taking 200 micrograms of high selenium yeast daily saw an average 12% drop in blood virus levels, according to the study in the Archives of Internal Medicine. "I liken selenium to a lion tamer in a circus," said lead author Barry Hurwitz, a professor of psychology and medicine at the University of Miami.

The fight to stop the spread of AIDS suffered a serious setback this week when researchers shuttered two high-profile trials of one of the most promising anti-AIDS compounds. Researchers had hoped that the so-called microbicide, a topical gel designed to block the transmission of the human immunodeficiency virus during sexual intercourse, would be particularly effective in stemming the epidemic of AIDS in Africa and Asia.

Researchers have halted two studies of an anti-AIDS vaginal gel in Africa and India after early results suggested it might raise the risk of HIV infection instead of lowering it. It was "a disappointing and unexpected setback" to efforts to get a simple tool to protect women from the risk of AIDS through sex, the World Health Organization said. In Africa, more than half of all new infections with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, involve women and girls.

Treating genital herpes may slow the progression of HIV, the AIDS virus, in those infected with both viruses, researchers reported Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine. The test involving 140 women in the West African country of Burkina Faso found that when herpes was being treated with 500 milligrams of the drug valacyclovir twice daily for three months, the women were less likely to spread the AIDS virus.

A highly drug-resistant form of tuberculosis has killed about 85% of South African HIV patients who have become infected, presenting one of the most worrisome problems in HIV and tuberculosis control, researchers reported Sunday. About 330 cases of so-called extensively drug-resistant, or XDR, tuberculosis have been verified in South Africa over the last year, said Karin Weyer of the South African Medical Research Council in Pretoria.

Three new studies indicate that it may be possible to avoid many of the fat-distribution problems associated with HIV drug therapy, giving patients a better quality of life and minimizing risk to their hearts, researchers said Monday. The introduction of powerful drug cocktails in the 1990s was a major breakthrough in HIV therapy, permitting patients to survive indefinitely.

In what some are hailing as the most important development in HIV therapy in a decade, two new classes of drugs have been found to block virus replication in patients resistant to existing drugs, researchers said Tuesday.