Community briefs

Tuesday, December 1, 1998

Community briefs

Preventative treatment for AIDS exposure OK'd

Immediate preventative treatment to ward off AIDS following possible exposure to HIV through sex or intravenous drug use is warranted under certain conditions, reports a University of California, Berkeley, researcher and her collaborators in the Nov. 25 Journal of the American Medical Association.

Such prophylactic treatment is already recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, but only for doctors, nurses and other medical professionals after accidental exposure to infected body fluids on the job. In one study of health care workers exposed to HIV-infected blood, AZT use was associated with a 79 percent reduction in infection.

"We're applying this recommendation in certain situations to the much more frequent modes of HIV transmission - intravenous drug use and sexual transmission," said UC Berkeley associate field research supervisor Suellen Miller, a public health faculty member and co-author of the research paper, which is published in a recent issue of JAMA.

"A non-infected person who practices safer sex with their HIV-positive mate and is accidentally exposed through condom breakage should be considered for prophylactic treatment in the same way as health care workers suffering a needle stick injury," Miller said. "It is ethically mandatory that all persons who receive similar exposures should receive similar treatment."

Saudi Arabian donation funds Berkeley program

A Saudi Arabia-based foundation is donating $5 million to the University of California, Berkeley, to establish programs that will broaden understanding of the Arab and Islamic worlds.

A delegation from the Sultan bin Abdulaziz Al-Saud Foundation presented UC Berkeley chancellor Robert M. Berdahl with the contribution on Tuesday. Representing the foundation were its secretary general, Prince Faisal bin Sultan bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, as well as Prince Bandar bin Sultan bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, who is the Saudi ambassador to the United States.

The gift will establish the Sultan bin Abdulaziz Al-Saud Program in Arab and Islamic Studies within UC Berkeley's Center for Middle Eastern Studies. It will comprise five elements: a visiting professorship, a visiting scholars and graduate fellows program, a research fund, an outreach fund and new quarters for the center.

UC Berkeley's Center for Middle Eastern Studies is ranked first (along with the University of Texas at Austin) among the 13 universities offering similar programs across the country, based on the level of funding it receives from the U.S. Department of Education.

In making the gift, the foundation recognized the "historic friendly relations" between UC Berkeley and educational institutions in Saudi Arabia, as well as UC Berkeley's academic excellence and public service mission.

Institute aids study of agricultural genetics

The University of California, Berkeley and the Novartis Agricultural Discovery Institute, Inc. have agreed to create a unique long-term research collaboration that will keep UC Berkeley scientists and California farmers at the forefront of agricultural biotechnology.

Under the terms of the agreement between Novartis and the Department of Plant and Microbial Biology in the College of Natural Resources, Novartis will commit $25 million over five years to support basic research in the department in the area of agricultural genomics.

It will also provide access to proprietary technology and DNA databases, which will significantly enhance the university's ability to do research at the forefront of plant genomics.

Compiled from Daily Bruin wire reports

Comments, feedback, problems?