Immunodeficiency Virus

Until Jan. 15, Hester Harbison thought she was a healthy mother of three young boys.But at an appointment with her doctor that day, Ms. Harbison, 23, was told -- mistakenly -- that she was infected with the AIDS virus.The news terrified her. For nearly a year she had been a nursing assistant, often working with AIDS patients at Johns Hopkins Hospital.What followed was a five-month nightmare that Ms. Harbison believed would end in a painful, lingering death similar to those she had witnessed at Hopkins.

In one of the first large studies to focus solely on women with the virus that causes AIDS, Johns Hopkins researchers have set out to learn why infected women get ill faster, receive less medical attention and die sooner than do their male counterparts.The five-year study, involving up to 1,600 women at four hospitals, was prompted partly by a growing concern that physicians are failing to recognize gynecological infections that may be early signs of infection with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)

WASHINGTON -- Setting the stage for possible federal approval of a third antiviral AIDS drug, early findings in an ongoing study have shown that the experimental AIDS drug DDC, used in combination with AZT, produces more than twice the crucial immune system cells as does AZT used alone.The findings were presented yesterday to a Food and Drug Administration advisory panel that is expected to vote today on whether to recommend approval of DDC, which is manufactured by Hoffmann-La Roche Inc., of Nutley, N.J. Although recommendations by advisory committees are not binding, the FDA almost always follows their advice.

ANNAPOLIS -- On shaky ground since their introduction this winter, three of the Schaefer administration's AIDS bills are in trouble.A joint subcommittee is recommending that lawmakers kill the ++ so-called "mandatory testing" bill that would require certain doctors and patients to be tested for the virus that causes acquired immune deficiency syndrome.Physicians and health care workers have opposed the state health department's bill on the grounds that it would be costly and would not stop the spread of AIDS.

MIAMI -- Researchers may have uncovered a reason for a puzzling phenomenon in AIDS transmission -- the mystery of why only 13 to 30 percent of babies with AIDS-infected mothers develop the disease.The mothers' immune systems apparently block all but a few variants of the AIDS virus, researchers at the University of Miami say."Not all of the variants that we see in the mothers are being transmitted to the babies," said Dr. Cecelia Hutto, an associate professor of clinical pediatrics at UM.The study was published yesterday in the journal Science by Dr. Hutto and scientists from Northwestern University, New York University and Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.

BERLIN -- Once at the center of the Cold War's last great propaganda battle, Jakob Segal now sits in his cramped high-rise, pondering why no one believes his theory that the AIDS epidemic was made in Maryland."

ANNAPOLIS -- A state health department bill requiring certain doctors and patients to be tested for the virus that causes AIDS may be sinking under the weight of its own cost.An official at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore said the legislation is a "financial disaster" that could cost Maryland's health care system $74 million a year."These costs would obviously be borne by the consumer, meaning higher health care costs," according to Dr. John G. Bartlett, infectious diseases division chief at Hopkins.

NEW YORK -- This was a scene out of a movie, confused only because it was out of time and place. With cameras clicking and the media buzzing, there was Earvin Johnson gamely dribbling the basketball and swishing jumpers with that funny right-handed push and Pat Riley working him with hard passes that forced him to react."

NEW YORK -- This was a scene out of a movie, confused only because it was out of time and place. With cameras clicking and the media buzzing, there was Earvin Johnson gamely dribbling the basketball and swishing jumpers with that funny right-handed push and Pat Riley working him with hard passes that forced him to react."

Over a three-year period, Maryland has registered HIV-infection levels for childbearing women that are among the highest in the United States, says the state health department's AIDS Administration.Only three other states -- New York, New Jersey and Florida -- and the District of Columbia, have HIV-infection rates for childbearing women that exceed Maryland's.While the dramatic rise in rates seen between 1988 and 1989 was not repeated in 1990, the number of childbearing women infected with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)