February
WHO launched its Global Programme on AIDS |
March
The FDA approved AZT as the first antiretroviral drug to be used as
a treatment for AIDS. |
March
President Ronald Reagan and French Prime Minister Jacques Chirac announced
a joint agreement settling the dispute arising from the discovery
of the AIDS virus, the first international agreement relating to a
biomedical research issue to be announced by heads of state. |
April
FDA approved the first Western blot blood test–a more specific
HIV diagnostic test. |
May
The CDC reported that between 1981 and 1987, nine health care workers
caring for AIDS patients and having no other risk factors had been
infected with HIV. |
June
NHLBI awarded a contract to maintain a colony of 50 chimpanzees for
studies of post-transfusion HIV infection and AIDS. |
August
The CDC reported 40,051 cases of AIDS in the United States with 23,165
deaths. |
August
The CDC revised its definition of AIDS to place a greater emphasis
on HIV infection status. |
August
On August 18, Dr. H. Clifford Lane and his NIAID colleagues began
the first U.S. clinical trial at NIH to test an experimental HIV vaccine
in humans. |
August
NIAID established the AIDS Vaccine Evaluation Group (AVEG), a network
of clinical sites to conduct trials of experimental HIV vaccines. |
Fall
The NIH Office of the Director launched its Targeted Antiviral Program
to encourage intramural analysis of the three-dimensional structure
of HIV and to determine the shape of protein-bound drugs. |
October
Cleve Jones made the first panel for the AIDS Memorial Quilt in memory
of his friend Marvin Feldman. |
October
NIAID established 17 Clinical Study Groups (CSGs) to extend to a wider
geographical area access to clinical trials of promising AIDS therapies. |
December
The CDC released the results of a study on the prevalence of HIV infection
in the United States, indicating a shifting emphasis toward defining
AIDS as “infection with HIV” rather than by defining particular
“indicator diseases” that characterized late-stage AIDS. |
