Word: viruses
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...AIDS researchers have accepted for some time now. Studies funded by the National Institutes of Health in Uganda, for example, showed that among heterosexual couples in which only one partner is HIV positive, the chances of spreading HIV are low if the HIV positive partner has low levels of virus circulating in the blood. Such viral load is also a key factor in determining whether HIV-positive pregnant women pass on the infection to their unborn children: women with lower viral loads have a smaller chance of infecting their babies. "The phenomenon of lower virus, less chance of transmission...
This winter's most common flu strain is showing resistance to the frontline anti-flu treatment, new data shows. More than 10% of virus samples taken in Western Europe this winter were resistant to oseltamivir, better known as Tamiflu, according to figures from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC). Nearly 10% of the samples in Canada were resistant too, according to national authorities there, and the U.S. found nearly 7% resistance. The number of resistant strains are still small overall, but the superbugs aren't evenly distributed around the world: In Norway, a staggering...
...samples are from a strain of flu virus known as H1N1, a subtype of the influenza A virus: the regular run-of-the-mill seasonal flu, not the dreaded H5N1 avian flu that's prompted countries around the world to stockpile tens of millions of doses of Tamiflu. So how worried should people be about the prospect of drug-resistant strains of influenza A? Only modestly, says World Health Organization spokeswoman Sari Setiogi in Geneva. "Influenza A has been circulating for many years. It's not likely to cause a pandemic," she says. The patients who gave samples...
...thing about the ECDC study was the 75% resistance rate found in Norway. Like doctors elsewhere in Western Europe - and in the U.S. and Canada - Norwegians don't routinely prescribe Tamiflu to their patients. (Tamiflu is not a flu vaccine, but a post-exposure treatment that helps prevent the virus from spreading within the body, and reduces symptoms.) They just tell them to get some rest and drink plenty of fluids. It's a bit of a mystery, then, why so many of Norway's samples are drug-resistant. In theory, viruses should develop resistance to drugs the same...
...having sex," says Dr. Dan Bowers, a senior partner in Pacific Oaks Medical Group in Beverly Hills, Calif., one of the country's largest private practices treating the HIV/AIDS community. Based on results of lab studies that suggest ARVs may confer some protective benefit when taken prior to virus exposure, some people have begun self-administering the drugs like a morning-after pill, in the hopes that the drugs' pre-exposure prophylactic benefits may apply after unsafe...