Very T ery little optimism emerged from a panel discussion entitled "AIDS [acquired immunodeficiency syndrome] Therapeutic Trials and Alternative Treatments" at the recent annual meeting of the American Association of Physicians for Human Rights, held in Chicago.
Panel members Paul Volberding, MD; Stephen Follansbee, MD; and Donald Abrams, MD, agreed that the usual therapeutic approaches to malignancy, infection, and associated manifestations of the syndrome (such as immune thrombocytopenic purpura [ITP]) may not be optimum in the setting of AIDS. "AIDS is not a disease to approach in the traditional way," said Volberding.
In discussing his approach to patients with Kaposi's sarcoma, Volberding (who is codirector of the Kaposi's sarcoma clinic at the University of California, San Francisco) emphasized that Kaposi's in the setting of AIDS does not appear to be the same disease as that seen in the original cases occurring in elderly men of Ashkenazi Jewish and Mediterranean ancestry