There still appears to be little in the way of consistently effective therapies for treating diarrhoea in patients with HIV infection where the diarrhoea results from an unknown cause, and even in some cases where the cause is known. The treatment of diarrhoea under these circumstances was discussed at the Annual Meeting of the American Gastroenterological Association and Digestive Disease Week [New Orleans, US; May 1994]. There do appear to be some approaches which show promise such as the use of somatostatin analogues and passive immunotherapy.