Could Early Treatment of HIV Avoid it Being Transmitted?

As well as being one of the biggest threats to sexual wellbeing, HIV is one of the most serious threats to the emotional and psychological wellness of those affected.

 

This is because once you have become infected, you not only have to live with the condition for the rest of your life, and the worry that it is going to cause the premature ending of your life, but you also have to become aware as a carrier that you are at risk of passing on the disease to others.

 

A large, randomised trial was recently carried out which involved over 1,700 heterosexual couples where one person in the couple had HIV and the other did not. The results of this trial were astounding, and seemed to indicate that early treatment of HIV could avoid it being transmitted sexually.

 

The results showed that the people who took the anti-HIV drugs reduced the risk of transmitted the disease to their partner by a whopping 96% when compared directly to those who did not receive the drugs early.

 

These results were so staggering that lead scientists Dr. Anthony Fauci decided to release the results of the study a good four years before it was scheduled to end, as he felt that the potential benefit of what they had discovered was enormous. All of the participants in the study are now offered the antiretroviral therapy.

 

Another trial was also recently carried out which seemed to indicate that using antiretroviral drugs could possibly be used as a preventative measure against contracting HIV. This trial involved 2,500 HIV negative males in countries where they were at high risk of contracting the disease. Those who took the anti-HIV drugs were found to be between 44 percent and 73 percent less likely to get HIV.

Categories: anti hiv, Disease, drugs, early treatment, HIV, hiv drugs, nbsp, results, treatment, trial

Prevention, Not Control: HIV Drugs Finally Do Their Job

Although the ultimate goal of AIDs therapy is to prevent the HIV affecting anyone’s sexual health in the first place, so far nothing — from vaccines to gels — has proven up to the task. Still, that’s not to say that drugs haven’t controlled the spread of HIV, but now a new exciting study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, has found a way for antiretroviral drugs to do the job for which they were always intended: guarding the wellbeing of healthy, uninfected individuals against HIV.

 

For the study, the researchers investigated almost 2,500 HIV-negative gay men, across six countries, who were at high risk of contracting HIV. Of those participants, some were given the currently prescribed treatment dose of a combination anti-HIV medication known as Truvada, while others took a placebo. After the study’s longest follow up of nearly three years, the researchers found that those taking the medication had a 44% lower rate of HIV infection than those taking a placebo. The benefit was even greater amongst those participants who took their medications more faithfully on a daily basis, as their risk of acquiring HIV dropped to a 73% lower rate than the placebo group.

 

In a statement, Dr. Kevin Fenton, director of the Centres for Disease Control (CDC) National Centre for HIV-AIDS, Viral Hepatitis, STD and TB Prevention, commented, ‘These results represent a major advance in HIV prevention research. For the first time, we have evidence that a daily pill used to treat HIV is partially effective for preventing HIV among gay and bisexual men at high risk for infection.’ Other wellness experts echoed this excitement, as those in the HIV community have long been pushing for a stronger preventative strategy, especially in the developing world. Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, noted, ‘The study is really quite impressive, and the data are very robust, really strong.’

 

The data was particularly encouraging to Fauci, as it represents a closer look at the difference in HIV infection rates among those taking medications, suggesting that varying degrees of exposure to anti-HIV medications can help to thwart infection. Even the volunteers who weren’t on-the-ball with taking their medications had a 13-fold lower rate of HIV infection than those who showed no measurable level of drug in their system. Fauci explained, ‘This is really huge; this is a very impressive result. As with any new treatment strategy, it’s all about whether you adhere to the regimen.’ Fauci added that he suspects many doctors already prescribe antiretroviral medications for this reason; heading off in uninfected but high-risk individuals. Even though government health officials are yet decide whether the results are robust enough to justify recommending anti-HIV drugs as a prevention strategy, Fauci believes these findings should bolster that practice.

 

Still, that is not to say that the findings give you an excuse to abandon safe sex with condoms. The drugs don’t alter your immune system or prime your body in the same way that a vaccine would against HIV; they act only when the infection is present, and block its ability to infect and replicate in your body’s healthy cells. Therefore, this prevention strategy only ensures that the drugs are on the front lines, ready to act at the first encounter with the virus. As Fenton concluded, ‘[The] results are exciting, but it is not time for anyone to stop using condoms or stop following proven prevention methods. [The study] cannot be seen as the first line of defence against HIV.’

Categories: anti hiv, Antiretroviral Drugs, drugs, fauci, high risk, hiv drugs, hiv infection, HIV prevention, infection, prevention, prevention strategy, Research

What Are Health Experts Advising for HIV Testing?

The treatment of HIV has been almost exclusively focused on for the past few decades, but it seems that public health experts are now planning a change in this field to focus more on preventative measures to curb the spread of disease. Recent research shows that anti-HIV drugs can help to hamper the growth of the virus to prevent the progression of the disease after the exposure to HIV in infected individuals. This same medication can also prevent infections from developing in healthy people who are exposed to virus, both of which could offer vital ways to control the spread of this disease to keep new cases of HIV to a minimum. An independent panel of health experts analysed a range of scientific evidence, including trials of anti-HIV drugs, and came to the conclusion that making HIV screening routine in the same way that cholesterol screening is will allow more people to determine their status. One in five people in the US living with HIV aren’t aware that their status is positive, and even high risk people such as gay and bisexual men are part of low test rates. Experts want to change this and hope that this new focus shift will result in a lowered rate of people developing HIV.

This knowledge could help to improve the public health campaigns to adopt a preventative strategy and move away from a primary focus on treatments in order to reduce the spread of HIV. These campaigns will promote measures that are beyond the common knowledge of safe sex and abstinence, which seem to have only been marginally effective in reducing infection rates. Naturally, the best course of dealing with HIV is to not get it in the first place, so preventing the disease from spreading in the first place could save thousands of people from having to go through treatment and screening processes. The treatments for HIV have improved significantly in recent years, but general screening could help make it a possibility that the whole population could be healthier. It seems that this shift in focus is also timely, as combination drug therapies have now created a sense of complacency around the disease.

Around 20 to 25 percent of people who are currently living with HIV are unaware that they’re HIV positive. Researchers have noted that the sense of urgency surrounding HIV has dissipated, largely because of the improvements with medication. But it also has something to do with the common mistake that people have that HIV only affects gay men or drug users – HIV can affect anyone, and is still a dangerous virus. If HIV testing became routine, more people would realise that the HIV epidemic remains prevalent – this is the hope of health experts. Normalising the screening of HIV and making it an active part of the medical care offered to people today will help to expand the reach that researchers have to identify people who need treatment. It will also help to make the campaign for preventing HIV easier, as researchers will have a better understanding of the scope of the epidemic. The best prevention, until more research takes place, is to ensure that you always have safe sex and get checked regularly for STDs and HIV. If you think that you may have HIV, then you should seek advice and testing from your GP as soon as possible. Health experts hope that increasing the education and urgency of this condition will help to alert people to the need for safe sex practices, and the importance of regular check ups.

Categories: health experts, HIV, hiv drugs, hiv testing, public health, Research, safe sex, Sex

Could a Bone Marrow Transplant Be a Possible Cure for HIV?

If HIV threatens your sexual health and wellbeing, a bone marrow transplant may be the cure. This is according to results from two patients, presented at the International Aids Society Conference, who have been taken off their HIV anti-retroviral drugs after bone-marrow transplants seemed to clear the virus from their bodies. While the team at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, in the US, caution that it is far too soon to talk about a cure as the virus could return at any point, one of the patients has spent nearly four months without taking medication with no sign of the virus re-affecting his wellness.

 

According to Dr Timothy Henrich, ‘We have not demonstrated cure, we’re going to need longer follow-up. What we can say is if the virus does stay away for a year or even two years after we stopped the treatment, that the chances of the virus rebounding are going to be extremely low. It’s much too early at this point to use the C-word [cure].’ The doctors believe that the course of anti-retrovirals initially protected the transplanted bone marrow from infection, while attacking the remaining bone marrow, which was harbouring the virus. However, HIV could be still hide inside your brain tissue or the gastrointestinal track. Dr Henrich cautioned, ‘If [the] virus does return, it would suggest that these other sites are an important reservoir of infectious virus and new approaches to measuring the reservoir at relevant sites will be needed to guide the development of HIV curative strategies.’

 

Dr Michael Brady, the medical director of the Terrence Higgins Trust, noted, ‘It is too early to know whether HIV has been eradicated from these men’s bodies or whether it might return. However, the case suggests that what happened to Timothy Brown, the Berlin Patient was perhaps not a one-off. A bone marrow transplant is a complex and expensive procedure, which comes with significant risks. For most people with HIV, it would be more dangerous to undergo a transplant than to continue managing the virus with daily medication. So while this is by no means a workable cure, it does give researchers another signpost in the direction of one.”

 

The head of the Foundation for AIDS Research, Kevin Frost, commented, ‘These findings clearly provide important new information that might well alter the current thinking about HIV and gene therapy. While stem-cell transplantation is not a viable option for people with HIV on a broad scale because of its costs and complexity, these new cases could lead us to new approaches to treating, and ultimately even eradicating, HIV.’

Categories: Bone Marrow Transplant, hiv drugs, Research

How Can Oral Combination Pills Revolutionise Your HIV Care?

Sexual health, and the European HIV drugs market, is set to become hugely impacted by the anticipated launch of drugs currently in the pipeline, and the introduction of oral combination pills. Frost & Sullivan, which provides disciplined research and best-practice models to drive the generation, evaluation, and implementation of powerful growth strategies, has analysed the European HIV Drugs Market, finding that the market earned over £3.6 billion in 2012 and will reach an estimated £6.06 billion in 2019.

For their analysis, Frost & Sullivan covered the most actively used antiretroviral (ARV) therapies, such as nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitor (NRTI), protease inhibitor (PI), non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitor (NNRTI), integrase inhibitors, and other therapeutics (ARV compounds like CCR5 receptor antagonists, fusion inhibitors, maturation inhibitors, attachment inhibitors and PK boosters).

According to Frost & Sullivan Healthcare Research Analyst Deepika Pramod Chopda, ‘In addition to popularly existing therapies like NRTI, NNRTI, PI and integrase inhibitors, new drug candidates over the last decade have spurred the HIV drugs market. The development of new candidates, derived from the less commonly used types of ARV therapies like PK boosters, maturation inhibitors, and attachment inhibitors, is driving the overall market.’

The new candidates assist highly active antiretroviral therapies (HAART), which are a combination of three or four types of ARV therapies. They contain technically advanced features such as easy consumption and higher adherence to combination therapy, as well as improved efficacy, and so wellness experts expect these drugs to boost the prospects of less common drug types. An important factor in market development will be the introduction of one-pill-daily combination drugs. The advantage of these drugs is that they are more convenient and easy to consume, but the key benefit is that reducing the number of drugs that need to be consumed directly reduces your levels of expenditure.

Markey expansion has been restrained due to the absence of established treatment procedures, which creates poor compliance. Disease awareness campaigns, treatment guidelines, counseling sessions and targeted diagnostics from health governing bodies can offset this restriction in the drugs market. Chopda concluded, ‘Awareness building efforts related to HIV prevention among high-risk groups is increasing. Better understanding about the need to practice safe-sex, use sterilised needles and conduct blood transfusion in a sterile environment, are also helping market prospects.’

How Can Oral Combination Pills Revolutionise Your HIV Care?

Categories: amp sullivan, arv therapies, attachment inhibitors, Drugs Market, europe, frost amp, HIV, hiv drugs, integrase inhibitors, nucleoside reverse, transcriptase inhibitor