Damage From Weak Form of HIV Casts Doubt on Vaccine Possibilities

Several people in Australia who caught a weakened form of HIV in the early 1980s are beginning to show AIDS-like damage to their immune systems, a development that has disappointing implications for the development of a vaccine. Between 1980 and 1984, 9 people in Australia were found to be infected by HIV containing a defective copy of a gene called nef.

Some researchers had hoped that this weak virus could be an effective AIDS vaccine. Some of the Australians, however, now appear to show weakening immune defenses, according to a report today in the New England Journal of Medicine. Three of the patients have falling levels of T cells and one has started taking AIDS drugs. .

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Compiled by Times medical writer Thomas H. Maugh II