A new study questions whether a Florida dentist actually transmitted the AIDS-causing virus to Kimberly Bergalis and four other patients.
Last year's analysis by Centers for Disease Control scientists concluded that the human immunodeficiency virus that killed Bergalis and infected four others came from their dentist, Dr. David Acer, who died of AIDS in 1990.But Ronald DeBry of Florida State University in Tallahassee, Fla., and colleagues did a new study raising doubts about the CDC investigation. DeBry said his analysis of HIV-infected people in south Florida found genetic material matching the virus traced to Acer in patients who had no contact with either Acer or his five HIV-infected patients.
"It is much less certain that the dentist infected the patients than the CDC said," DeBry said in an interview. "We're not saying that the dentist did not infect any or all of the patients, and we're not saying that the patients had a source of infection other than the dentist."
"All we are saying is that we don't think you can tell one way or the other from the data," said Debry, whose findings were reported in the journal Nature.
Dr. Harold Jaffe, director of the CDC's HIV/AIDS division, said the agency stands by its findings.
DeBry's study disregards "the totality of the investigation," Jaffe said. "We looked at these five patients and 30 control patients in the community by three different analytic methods and found in all of them that the dental patients were infected with a virus different from the rest of the community."
"The probability that this would happen by chance is less than 1 in 100,000," he said, adding that the CDC also ruled out other risk factors - such as sexual contact with an HIV-infected person - for the dental patients' infections.