Word: hiv
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...success of anti-retroviral drugs in treating HIV is getting researchers at the 16th International AIDS conference excited at the prospect that the potent medicines might be exploited to perform double duty. Why not use the power of these ARVs to prevent an HIV transmission or infection from taking hold in the first place? Bill and Melinda Gates asked that provocative question on the opening day of the conference, and are committing their considerable financial resources toward finding an answer. In their remarks, they highlighted the need to develop microbicides and oral prevention drugs while we wait for a vaccine...
...Preventing HIV is the only way to keep the number of new infections that occur each year - 4 million - from growing. And yet prevention strategies, always the ugly stepsister to treatment programs, have not really taken hold in the developing nations where the rate of infection is highest. An effective vaccine, of course, is the ultimate prevention weapon, but as the Gates' pointed out, an HIV shot is still a long way off. In the meantime, microbicides could be one way to co-opt ARVS into the prevention war; these are chemical compounds, usually in the form...
...difference is that in a microbicide, the drugs are being used in healthy people rather than in those infected with HIV. When ARVs are used for treatment, both doctors and patients are willing to tolerate a higher level of side effects - after all, if the choice is between dying from HIV-AIDS and side effects, most patients opt for the latter. If the drugs are to be used to prevent infection, however, everything changes; understandably, healthy people aren't as likely to accept the same level of side effects and toxicities as those already infected...
That ought to be very good news, but in a disturbing echo of the earliest days of the epidemic, many hospitals and other institutions are clearly unprepared for a sudden influx of a new population of HIV patients: middle-aged and even elderly people surviving with the disease into their later decades. Nearly 27% of people living with AIDS in the U.S. are 50 or older--a proportion that is expected to increase. This vanguard group must confront the ordinary ailments of age complicated by the extraordinary ferocity of the AIDS virus...
There are practically no studies on how medications for high blood pressure, osteoporosis or other age-related maladies interact with AIDS drugs, says Stephen Karpiak, one of the authors of a landmark report on older folks and HIV that was released last week by the AIDS Community Research Initiative of America (ACRIA). In addition, nerve pain, visual problems and other ills associated with HIV mimic those of aging, leading many doctors to confuse symptoms of AIDS with hallmarks...