Word: hiv
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...million people around the world infected with HIV, the news seemed too good to be true - and in many ways, it is. Researchers at the Swiss Federal Commission for HIV-AIDS issued a bold and provocative statement last week declaring that certain HIV-positive people receiving treatment for their infection are essentially "not sexually infectious, i.e. cannot transmit HIV through sexual contact...
...sense of protection and lead to less condom usage," says Bowers, particularly among highly sexually active individuals. Last spring, following the buzz over studies of tenofovir and emtricitabine, the same drug combo used in the recent Texas mice study, in preventing transmission of SIV (the primate-specific cousin of HIV) in macaque monkeys, Bowers was compelled to respond in his column in HIV Plus magazine, warning that "society once again is moving ahead of science. ... This is definitely not the time to be leaving condoms behind...
Doctors also worry that over the long term, people may build up resistance to ARVs - dangerous if a non-infected person takes the drugs prophylactically, then becomes infected later - or that HIV itself will become drug resistant. Greene says individuals using a single antiretroviral drug run a higher risk of developing resistance - combo drugs seem to lower the probability. Human trials of combined retrovirals are under way - in high-risk groups such as sex workers and gay men, both in the U.S. and elsewhere - but results of those studies won't be available for at least another year...
Meanwhile, physicians are seeing an increase in HIV infection rates among sexually active gay men in the U.S., accompanied by rising syphilis rates, which can complicate treatment. In Africa, Greene says, there are "some islands of success" but troubling increases in HIV transmission in other regions. Public-health experts acknowledge that there is no one magic bullet, no single approach to defeat AIDS, and that even the potential success of prophylactic antiretroviral drugs is only one arrow in the medical quiver. "There are all kinds of variables," Greene cautions, including drug-resistance issues, evolving viruses, individual patterns of infection...
...news out of Texas was good, but worldwide the battle against AIDS has many fronts, with no sign that the pandemic will be defeated soon. "I don't think drugs can give 100% protection," Dr. Bowers says. "Using HIV drugs may reduce the rate but they are not going to make that zero...