HIV Infection: January 2007 Archives

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

Hong Kong is urging residents who have had unsafe sex to undergo HIV tests after it found two large clusters of new infections that point to an unparalleled fast and local spread of the virus in the city.

"This is a fast spread in a place with low HIV prevalence. We have never seen this before," Wong Ka-hing, a consultant for the Health Department's Special Preventive Program, said in an interview on Thursday.

The two clusters involve 46 men, but authorities have not ruled out the chance of more people, including women, being infected.

The men were diagnosed with HIV between November 2003 and September 2006. Their virus samples were so genetically similar that local scientists believe they probably passed the virus to one another.