‘Slim’ reports

Doctors in rural Uganda report on a new, fatal wasting disease known locally as ‘slim’ in the medical journal, The Lancet. Slim is associated with HTLV-III (later known as HIV, and the cause of AIDS), but not with Kaposi’s sarcoma – which is endemic in the region. David Serwadda, one of the lead authors of the study, later says he’d read about the cases of gay men in America, but it was hard to see the link.