[Newspaper clippings: New Theory on Spread of an AIDS Cancer] Part: 3 of 4
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New Theory on Spread of an AIDS Cancer
Continued From Page Al
Eastern European Jewish men, said
Dr. Alvin E. Friedman-Kien, the New
York researcher. It appeared in Africa
in the 20th century, rising to near epi-
demic proportions in some countries.
Dr. Friedman-Kien said that 9 percent
of all tumors in Uganda in 1961 were
diagnosed as Kaposi's sarcoma.
"The significance is that we think
Kaposi's sarcoma was probably intro-
duced simulaneously into the gay
community with AIDS," Dr. Fried-
man-Kien said. In the early years of
the AIDS epidemic, nearly half of all
gay men who were infected with the
AIDS virus also had Kaposi's sarco-
ma, Dr. Friedman-Kien said. "Since
then, the incidence has diminished to
less than 15 percent," he said. But, he
added, the cancer remains largely
concentrated among gay men in this
country, and 95 percent of all cases
are still in that group.
The new findings "are interesting,"
said Dr. Jay A. Levy, a AIDS re-
searcher at the University of Califor-
nia School of Medicine who has stud-
ied the cause of Kaposi's sarcoma.
The finding of young men with Kapo-
si's sarcoma but not AIDS, "certainly
re-opens the issue," of what caused
the cancer, Dr. Levy added.
Dr. Friedman-Kien said that at
least a small proportion of people who
have been diagnosed with AIDS be-
cause they have this cancer may not
have AIDS at all.Kaposi's sarcoma
may be transmitted
apart from AIDS.
Dr. Friedman-Kien was among the
first to notice a surprising incidence
of the cancer among young gay men
in the early 1980's, a finding that was
one of the first hints of the AIDS epi-
demic. Kaposi's sarcoma was so
closely associated wtih AIDS virus in-
fections that a diagnosis of the cancer
is part of the official defintion of
AIDS. And with the weakening of the
immune system caused by the AIDS
virus, Kaposi's sarcoma became
especially virulent, spreading more
rapidly than had ever been seen in the
old European men.
Dr. Friedman-Kien has saved blood
samples from all his 750 Kaposi's sar-
coma patients, which has enabled
him to look back and determine
whether they were also infected with
the AIDS virus. The eight men he
identified have had Kaposi's sarcoma
for up to eight years, yet no test, in-
cluding the newest and most sensitive
ones, show any infection with the
AIDS virus, Dr. Friedman-Kien said.
"Some doctors have diagnosed
AIDS on the basis of Kaposi's sar-
coma without bothering to get a blood
test," Dr. Friedman-Kien said. But he
added that most people with the can-
cer do have AIDS.
Dr. Harold W. Jaffe, deputy direc-tor for science at the Centers for Dis-
ease Control, an author of one of the
studies, said that the epidemiological
data "build a pretty convincing argu-
ment that there is a transmissible
factor" causing the cancer. The situa-
tion "is really similar to the situation
we were in in the AIDS epidemic in
1981 and 1982," he added.
"We could build an epidemiologic
case that there was an infectious
cause," he said. "Then it was up to
the laboratory researchers to find it."
In their paper, the Centers for Dis-
ease Control researchers said that
Kaposi's sarcoma is "at least 20,000
times more common than would be
expected" based on the cases that
were identified in the United States
before the AIDS epidemic. They said
this indicates that the disease be-
came more prevalent here at about
the same time as AIDS appeared.
Dr. Thomas Peterman, a re-
searcher who worked with Dr. Jaffe,
said that he was struck particularly
by the fact that virtually the only peo-
ple with AIDS who developed Kapo-
si's sarcoma were gay men and
heterosexual men and women from
Africa and the Caribbean. It looks
like there was what Dr. Peterman
called a "K.S. epidemic" spreading in
Africa, in the Caribbean, and among
gay men in the United States, but not
among other groups who would not
have had sexual exposure to these
groups of people.
The Kaposi's sarcoma epidemic
among gay men has waned, however,
as the men changed their sexual
practices to avoid infection with the
AIDS virus.
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New York Times. [Newspaper clippings: New Theory on Spread of an AIDS Cancer], clipping, January 23, 1990; (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc915954/m1/3/: accessed June 2, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; crediting UNT Libraries Special Collections.