Research Pioneer Opens Local Office to Treat AIDS Patients

The first medical office in the San Gabriel Valley devoted solely to treating AIDS patients has opened in Pasadena.

“There are a number of excellent physicians, part of whose practice involves HIV/AIDS, but no one who is doing HIV exclusively,” said Dr. Michael Gottlieb, an AIDS pioneer who is expanding his practice to open the new office.

Gottlieb, a Pasadena resident, was a researcher in immunology at UCLA in 1981 when he published the first paper identifying the existence of a new epidemic. The disease would later be named acquired immune deficiency syndrome.

He went on to run one of the first drug trials of AZT in AIDS patients, then, in 1988, went into private practice, where he and his partners specialize in treating AIDS patients and people who test HIV-positive.

Gottlieb Medical Group, which consists of Gottlieb, a second doctor and a physician’s assistant, also has offices in Sherman Oaks and West Hollywood. “We’re a specialty HIV service provider from testing (for the virus) to fully involved AIDS,” said Gottlieb. The new office opened earlier this month.

“It will definitely help,” said one of Gottlieb’s patients, who asked to remain anonymous. The patient, who lives in the San Gabriel Valley, sees Gottlieb at his Sherman Oaks office.

According to the AIDS Service Center in Pasadena, about 20,000 people in the San Gabriel Valley have been diagnosed as HIV-positive.

“I’m looking forward to his association here,” said Dr. Stephen Henry, an internist who not only treats HIV-positive patients in private practice, but also works with the Escajeda HIV Early Intervention Clinic for uninsured patients. “If you look at the number of AIDS cases in the San Gabriel Valley, there’s only a small number of us doing AIDS.”

Dina Rosen, acting executive director for the AIDS Service Center in Pasadena, agrees that Gottlieb’s presence in the San Gabriel Valley will be a plus.

“A lot of people continue to go over the hill” to West Los Angeles or the San Fernando Valley for medical treatment, she said. “And hopefully, because of Dr. Gottlieb’s prominence, people will feel more comfortable staying in their own back yard.”

Although his reputation was initially built as a researcher, Gottlieb became more interested in private practice in 1987 during the testing of AZT.

“I experienced a lot of conflict in that trial,” Gottlieb said. “Many of the research subjects were also my patients, and as a doctor I wanted the best for my patients. But with my other hat as a researcher, I had to hold to the integrity of the trial. Until the statisticians said that we had clear-cut proof, we had to continue the trial and leave the placebo patients on the placebo.”

Attitudes toward the disease have softened, especially in the last couple of years, he said, and he’s seen several new twists in HIV care. Nutrition and physical fitness are taking a larger role. “I think we’re realizing that there’s an enormous temptation to over-medicate,” he said.

While the new Pasadena office will be fully staffed and open five days a week with a physician’s assistant seeing patients, Gottlieb will only be there one day a week at first, eventually working up to three days a week.

The group is looking for additional physicians and physician’s assistants to help staff the other offices. “It would be my hope that I can spend an increasing amount of time in Pasadena,” Gottlieb said.