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25 HIV-infected antiretroviral-naive adults were included in a 24-week study to evaluate the efficacy and the tolerability of a zidovudine/didanosine combination therapy in which didanosine was administered once daily (200 mg if weight < 60 kg, 300 mg if weight > 60 kg) and zidovudine twice daily (500 mg/day if weight < 90 kg, 600 mg/day if weight > 90 kg). 5 patients discontinued their treatment early: 3 had poor compliance and 2 presented adverse events. Evaluation of treatment efficacy was based on CD4+ T cell enumeration and HIV RNA level quantitation in plasma (NASBA). Baseline values were 278 CD4+/mm3 and 5.42 log RNA copies/ml. Mean changes from baseline were +102 CD4+/mm3 and -2.14 log RNA copies/ml at week 8 and +156 CD4+/mm3 and -2.07 log RNA copies/ml at week 24. HIV RNA in plasma was lower than the detection limit (2.60 log RNA copies/ml) in 55% of patients at week 8 and in 30% at week 24. No major adverse events such as neuropathy or pancreatitis were observed. Once-daily administration of didanosine in combination with twice-daily administration of zidovudine is a well tolerated regimen that appears to be as effective ad the conventional zidovudine/didanosine combination regimen.

The authors report two cases of priapism of more than six hours, following intracavernous injection of 15 and 10 mcg PgE1 respectively, in six patients with impotence after radical cystoprostatectomy. Bearing in mind the proven safety of intracavernous injection of PgE1 in the treatment and diagnosis of erectile dysfunction, such a proportion of priapism in this group of patients has called our attention. It is probably due to an increased in the PgE1 intracavernous metabolism, due to the ligation of the penile venous drainage during surgery.

An attempt was made to test the hypothesis that immunological dysfunction occurs in primary polyenthesopathy (PP) by studying skin immunofluorescence, capillary microscopy, photoplethysmography and the lymphocyte populations in PP patients defined according to the usual criteria of Yunus. Skin immunofluorescence in 15 PP patients (14 women, 1 man, average age 50.9 years) failed to reveal any deposit of IgG, A, M, Clq, or C3c either at the dermoepidermal junction or in the vessels. 26 patients (24 women, 2 men, average age 50.5 years) were studied using capillary microscopy and 12 using digital photoplethysmography. The microvascularization abnormalities observed were mild and non specific. A study of the lymphocyte populations using Coulter flux cytometry in 35 PP patients (32 women, 3 men, average age 46 years) did not show any modification in the number of CD4 and CD8 lymphocytes by comparison with the controls. These results do not agree with the data given in the literature and this is probably due to the heterogeneity of the patients studied, with some studies showing a low concentration of antinuclear factors and an abnormal frequency of dry symptoms which, in the opinion of the authors, is considered as an exclusion criterion in the diagnosis of PP. In the author's view, polyenthesopathy is not an immune disease.

Two "protective" monoclonal anti-Brucella antibodies are described (SF311-IgG2a and S480-IgA) both of them accelerate the blood clearance of i.v. inoculated Brucella suis 1330 and decrease murine splenic infection on day 7.