Recently in HIV Infection Category

Science Daily — A new study led by McGill University researchers shows that half of all HIV transmissions happen when newly infected people don’t know they are carrying the virus and may not even test positive for it.

The study, published in the April edition of the Journal of Infectious Diseases and already available online, followed 2,500 patients in eight Montreal HIV clinics over eight years. It showed that newly infected patients are eight times more likely to transmit the virus than those in the chronic stage of AIDS given the same behaviour.

LOS ANGELES, Feb. 28 -- Like the traditional HIV-associated opportunistic infections, the toll of conditions such as heart and liver disease is also affected by the immune status of a patient, researchers reported here.

Most of us have previously assumed that prolonged survival and advancing age explain much of the increase in these common end-organ diseases" among HIV patients, said Jason Baker, M.D., of the University of Minnesota at the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections here.

But in fact, he told an oral abstract session, the increase is related to a patient's CD4 count.

Breast-feeding, which helps build a baby's immune system, may be the best option for HIV-infected mothers in developing countries, despite the risk of transmitting the virus that causes AIDS to their babies, according to new studies presented on Monday.

HIV-positive mothers generally are counseled to feed their babies formula to limit the risk of transmission of the human immunodeficiency virus, but that has caused problems in nations where clean water and other needs may not be met.

Dr. Hoosen Coovadia a pediatrician at South Africa's University of KwaZulu-Natal, told the 14th Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections that instructing HIV-infected mothers in developing nations to breast-feed would result in about 300,000 children becoming infected with HIV, but would save 1.5 million from dying of other diseases.

A recent survey shows Indonesia has the fastest growth rate of HIV infection among Asian countries, the World Health Organization (WHO) said Saturday. Half of the country's cases are found in the easternmost province of Papua.

The survey found that 2 percent of the Papua population had HIV, 20 times higher than the national average.

WHO said Indonesia recorded 316 new cases of AIDS in 2003. The number increased to 1,195 in 2004 and rocketed to 2,638 in 2005 and 2,873 new cases in 2006.

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Estimated Number of AIDS Cases and Deaths among Adults and Adolescents with AIDS, 1985–2005—United States and Dependent Areas
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The numbers of new infections of HIV and AIDS patients in Japan hit record highs in 2006, the Health Ministry said Wednesday, underscoring concerns over spreading infections.

The number of new HIV infections last year was 914, up nearly 10 percent from 2005, according to preliminary data released by the ministry's AIDS Surveillance Committee.

The number of those who developed AIDS in 2006 was 390, up 6.3 percent from the year before.

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. - AIDS is not the bad word it used to be in Broward County, Fla.'s black neighborhoods.

Once such a taboo subject that many black people would not acknowledge the health crisis in their communities, AIDS and the virus that can lead to it, HIV, now are important topics in an important black institution: the church.

Black preachers are breaking the silence, calling from the pulpit for abstinence and AIDS testing. Health workers say it has made people more receptive to awareness campaigns.

Those efforts have helped lead to a decline in the number of new infections, Broward health officials said.

HIV patients may have an effective weapon to lengthen their lives, thanks to selenium. Taking a selenium supplement daily appears to keep HIV at bay and also strengthen the immune system, according to research by the University of Miami.

In a double-blind study of 262 HIV patients divided between patients receiving the supplements and placebos, the patients who received 200 micrograms of high-selenium yeast each day fought the disease much better. When each patient was given a comprehensive medical exam at the end of the study 9 months later, the ones who took selenium daily had a lower amount of the HIV virus in their bloodstream and better immune cell counts compared to those who hadn't.

"It's no surprise that selenium is finally getting the credit it deserves as a potent antiviral mineral," said Mike Adams, author of "The Seven Laws of Nutrition."

Detecting whether patients with HIV/AIDS are infected with even small amounts of drug-resistant forms of the virus can be done with a test developed by researchers at Duke University Medical Center.

While other tests only pick up drug-resistant strains when they represent a significant portion of the virus in a person's bloodstream, the test developed at Duke may enable doctors to more accurately predict which medicines will work for patients and which drugs will ultimately fail.

"This can be huge," said Dr. Feng Gao, a Duke HIV/AIDS researcher and co-author of the article published online Sunday in the journal Nature Methods.

While the nation's rate of HIV disease has largely stabilized, HIV/AIDS is still a growing epidemic in this state. The AIDS case rate in North Carolina rose 60 percent between 2000 and 2004, compared with a 4 percent increase nationally.

Here are some facts about the disease in North Carolina in 2005:

• The overall HIV disease infection rate in the state was 21.1 cases per 100,000 residents. That translates to an estimated 29,500 residents with either HIV or AIDS, including people who are not aware they are infected.
• New HIV/AIDS infections were diagnosed in 1,806 people.
• The rate for blacks was seven times the rate for whites, at 61.4 cases per 100,000 compared with 8.6 per 100,000.
• The highest rate of infection was among black males, with 88.6 cases per 100,000.

source - N.C. Department of Health and Human Services