NEWS

UNC symposium for health professionals updates HIV diagnosis and treatment

By LESLIE H. LANG
UNC School of Medicine

CHAPEL HILL -- A half-day symposium sponsored by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine will update primary caregivers and specialists on the latest in diagnosis and treatment for people with HIV infection.

"Opportunistic Infections and Antiretroviral Therapy: HIV Care 2002" convenes May 13 at the university’s William and Ida Friday Center for Continuing Education. From 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., national experts will give brief, precise talks with a variety of practical information for clinicians. This is the symposium’s 11^th year.

Dr. H. Clifford Lane, director of the Clinical Center at the National Institutes of Health, is among the presenters. Lane has been instrumental in revealing the impact of HIV on the immune system and the benefit of drugs such as Interleukin-2. He will address issues related to immunotherapy and strategic treatment interruption.

Dr. Joel Gallant of Johns Hopkins School of Medicine will discuss when to start treatment, which combinations of drugs should be used and why, and potential treatment regimens for patients who are not improving.

In his talk, "Resistance Testing for Dummies," Dr. Steven Deeks, associate professor of medicine at the University of California at San Francisco, discusses the role of genotypic and phenotypic resistance in patient management. He also will explore the concept of viral fitness and resistance. Deeks is among the first in the field of HIV to describe immune system benefits from treatment even for patients whose blood levels of HIV are not fully suppressed.

Addressing the topic of international AIDS will be Dr. Eugene McCray, chief of the Global AIDS Program at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "Dr. McCray has been the leader in organizing the U.S. government’s response to the AIDS epidemic around the globe," said Dr. Charles M. van der Horst, professor of medicine at UNC and director of the university’s AIDS Clinical Trials Unit.

Other presentations will explore emerging complications and their related therapies and will look at HIV as primary infection. In addition, a panel will discuss "clinical conundrums" in HIV care.

Van der Horst, symposium organizer, said that during the last year the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved "a plethora of medications for HIV therapy. This symposium will help put these in perspective."

He said the event has proven popular in the last decade, drawing approximately 300 attendees. "Clinicians can drive here, get home at night and make rounds in the morning. We attract attendees from across the state – from the coast, Camp Lejeune, Fort Bragg and the mountains."

Registration for the symposium is available online at http://www.med.unc.edu/cme/ or by calling the School of Medicine’s Office of Continuing Medical Education at (919) 962-2118.

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Note: Van der Horst may be contacted at (919) 966-2536 or cvdh@med.unc.edu.

School of Medicine contact: Les Lang at (919) 843-9687 or llang@med.unc.edu