The study, reported last week in The New England Journal of Medicine, used 37 gay or bisexual men with both AIDS and Kaposi’s. The highest dose of hCG, found researchers led by Dr. Robert Gallo of the University of Maryland, made 90 to 100 percent of the cancer cells commit suicide. In five of six patients who received the highest dose, the tumors disappeared and have not returned for up to five months. Although the scientists are not sure how hCG works, it seems to lock onto a cancer cell’s docking ports–receptors–and signal the cell’s DNA to run its suicide software.
But the true significance of the paper may be what it does not say. It is an open secret in the AIDS research community that Gallo’s lab is in hot pursuit of hCG’s effects on AIDS. The team began its hCG work when they accidentally injected pregnant mice (who have lots of a hormone analogous to hCG) with Kaposi’s cells; the mice did not develop tumors, perhaps because the hormone fights the AIDS virus. If Gallo’s next study of hCG and AIDS is as stunning as the buzz among researchers suggests, then Kaposi’s will loom even larger in AIDS history.
