Diagnosis: AIDS then and now

Dr. Jim Curran headed the U.S. government's first task force on AIDS

By Susan Deutchman Lilly
CNN

ATLANTA (CNN) -- While scientists concede they may be far from a cure, today's AIDS drugs "are nothing short of miraculous," says Dr. Jim Curran, head of the first government task force on what was later called AIDS.

As of June 2000, 754,000 AIDS cases have been reported in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Since the beginning of the epidemic, 440,000 Americans have died, the CDC reports. About 800,000 to 900,000 people in the United States are living with HIV, according to CDC estimates.

Diagnosis of AIDS in the 1980s was most often associated with a quick death.

"Mortality came rather quickly and was inevitable within a few months of the diagnosis of people," says Curran, who was with the CDC when it first noticed the virus was killing gay men.

"When we first began to investigate AIDS, we were constantly sounding the alarms at CDC saying the cases are doubling every six months. People should take this epidemic more seriously," Curran remembers. "Even we didn't know that our warnings were really just small whispers about the size of the problem that we were in the midst of."

It wasn't until 1987 that AZT, the first drug to combat the virus, became available. It took nearly 10 more years before real progress was made in improving and prolonging the lives of people with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.

In 1996, the next big breakthrough came when researchers announced at the International AIDS Conference in Vancouver, British Columbia, the initial results of what was dubbed HAART therapy, or highly active anti-retroviral therapy. This approach used a combination of antiviral agents that would become known as AIDS "cocktails."

"People who were previously on their deathbeds or who were dying or suffering terribly from AIDS had hope now, not (of a) cure, but (of) a recovery of their high quality of life," Curran notes.

It may take decades longer until a cure is found, researchers say. Most of the hope lies in a possible AIDS vaccine, and public health experts emphasize the importance of prevention and education in the effort to reduce the incidence and deaths from this disease.

Susan Deutchman Lilly is executive producer of CNN Medical News.

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