Welcome to AIDS & HIV articles category.

You can find informaion on AIDS & HIV articles and news.

HIV AIDS is a disease that has baffled the best scientific minds of the West. This is due in part to its incredible complexity. Factors such as culture, environment, nutrition and lifestyle all influence its incidence and progression. As a result it is much more amenable to anthropological analysis than many other diseases encountered in developed societies. Due to financial constraints, developing nations often have to rely on herbal medicine, spirituality, and other approaches beyond the pharmaceuticals of industrial societies. In this column we will look at the diversity of responses to AIDS from around the world which offer territories of exploration for future AIDS therapies.

India

In India, innovative approaches to AIDS based on indigenous plant medicines are being explored. Shashank R. Joshi, MD, president of the HOPE Foundation in Mumbai, India, explains that since few patients in India have access to expensive triple-drug combination, antiretroviral treatment practitioners have had to develop low-cost treatment models. In particular, he has found that he can prevent mitochondrial toxicity in patients taking AIDS drugs by giving them proper immunonutrition, including herbs and other dietary supplements. This nutritional therapy is particularly important in the Indian population because wasting is a major problem.

Abstract:

HIV-1 is parasitic. Since it encodes for glutathione peroxidase, as it replicates, its genetic needs cause it to deprive HIV-1 seropositive individuals of selenium, cysteine, glutamine and tryptophan, the four basic components of this selenoenzyme. Eventually this process causes severe deficiencies of each of these four nutrients. These deficiencies are responsible for the major symptoms of AIDS which include immune system collapse, muscle wasting, dermatitis, diarrhea and dementia. Associated pathogenic cofactors also are responsible for a variety of unique symptoms. Any treatment for HIV/AIDS must, therefore, include normalization of body levels of selenium, cysteine, glutamine and tryptophan.

Introduction

It is hypothesized that HIV-1 kills simply by replication, because as Taylor and coworkers have established, HIV-1 encodes for glutathione peroxidase. (1) This genetic characteristic ensures that as this virus replicates it competes with its host for the four basic components of this selenoenzyme: namely selenium, cysteine, glutamine and tryptophan. (2) It follows that unless supplements are added to the diet of HIV-1 seropositive individuals, this process must eventually, inevitably culminate in extreme shortages of these four substances, each of which will be accompanied by its own deficiency symptoms. It is argued here that AIDS is the end result of this multiple depletion process and that it can be treated most effectively by reversing all four of these nutrient deficiency states.

If this hypothesis is correct, HIV/ AIDS patients will be found to be deficient in selenium, cysteine, glutamine and tryptophan. As a result, supplementation with any one of these substances will reduce some, but not all, of their disease symptoms. The remainder of this article presents evidence that this is indeed the case.

Selenium Deficiency

Several studies have shown declining plasma selenium in individuals with HIV/AIDS. (3-5) Baum and coworkers, (3) for example, monitored 125 HIV-1seropositive drug using, men and women in Miami, Florida, establishing that depressed selenium plasma levels were a more accurate predictor of their mortality than were CD4 T cell counts. Similarly, 24 HIV-infected children were monitored for 5 years, during which time 50% died of HIV-related causes. (6) The lower their serum selenium levels, the more rapidly death occurred, indicating an association with faster disease progression.

In an article published in the Netherlands’ medical journal Genetica, Professor Peter Duesberg and David Rasnick, PhD, criticize the generally-accepted hypothesis that AIDS is caused by HIV. They propose instead that the use of recreational and/or toxic anti-HIV drugs is the primary cause of AIDS and that HIV is a “harmless passenger virus.”

In their article, the scientists explain that the AIDS epidemic does not have the characteristics of an infectious disease. First, unlike other infectious diseases, no single identifiable illness has been specifically linked to HIV and only HIV. The 30-plus illnesses attributed to AIDS occur in persons who test HIV positive and, also, in those who test negative.

Second, the progression of AIDS has been non-exponential and non-random in the United States and Europe. The authors explain: “…infectious epidemics, particularly viral epidemics, disappear again within weeks or months as a result of antiviral or microbial immunity and the selection of resistant survivors…..This generates the conventional bell curve, a rapid rise of cases within weeks or months, followed by a decline as immunity arises and susceptible hosts die out. But there is no evidence for the emergence of immunity as the AIDS epidemic continues to progress.” Non-exponential progression is characteristic of a lifestyle disease. Furthermore, the distribution of AIDS in the US and Europe is distinctly nonrandom: 86% are male; over 60% are homosexual; and 85% are 25-49 years old - the age group least likely to develop an infectious disease.

A Kenyan law allowing genetic and other inexpensive anti-retroviral HIV/AIDS drugs to be imported into Kenya and manufactured in the country came into effect recently. Drug companies blasted the country, but aid agencies said the move will lead to greatly expanded access to drugs for Kenyans with HIV.BBC Online reported only 3,000 of the 2 million Kenyans infected with HIV are now on anti-retrovirals, which it reported cost about $85 per month. “Genetic competition is the way forward,” said Kenyan doctor John Wasonga. “If we have generics at a fair price, then the majority of these people will be able to see their next birthday. Or see their children finish school.”

Sophie-Marie Scouflaire of Medecins Sans Frontieres said cheaper drugs will create a snowball effect, allowing charities to buy and administer the treatments. “If the medicines are cheaper, you will have more private companies who will give them to their staff,” she said. “It will be less expensive to treat their employees (with anti-retrovirals) than pay bills from hospitals.”

GlaxoSmithKline’s Kenya Marketing Director William Kiarie said, however, that anti-retroviral prices are already one-tenth of their original price but that usage has not increased accordingly. “Bringing the price down by 10 percent, 20 percent, we are going to see very little increase in people using the drugs,” Kiarie said. “Basically, because people are poor, and governments are poor.”

Meanwhile, some HIV/AIDS groups have complained that inferior infrastructure and stifling state bureaucracy will limit the law’s effect. One Kenyan manufacturer that has already been working for 1 1/2 years to produce triple therapy drugs will have to wait at least six months for their drugs to be licensed, BBC Online reported, adding that the country’s health service is “ramshackle” (Ishbel Matheson, BBC Online, May 1). Sobby Mulindi of the Kenya AIDS Watch Institute criticized the government for doing too little, questioning its urgency to pass the new law without making plans to train medical personnel in administering the drugs.

1 What is AIDS?

Acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) is a set of symptoms that indicate a person has become infected with a virus that has seriously damaged the body’s immune system. A key symptom is the development of one or more of a range of ‘opportunistic’ diseases.

2 And what is HIV?

AIDS is caused by HIV–the human immunodeficiency virus. HIV attacks the body’s immune system, especially CD4 cells (also known as T-cells) which help fight infections. HIV invades these cells and tricks them into reproducing copies of the AIDS virus.

3 How does the virus work?

Eventually the virus destroys the [CD.sub.4] cell. The HIV ‘copies’ then find more CD4 cells to attack. Finally, so many CD4 cells are destroyed that the immune system breaks down leaving it defenceless against deadly invaders. Today there are sophisticated means of measuring damage to the immune system. One of them is your CD4 cell count. The average healthy person has count of 800 to 1500. A person who is HIV positive (or seropositive) will have a much lower count, usually 500 or less.

4 How do you get it?

You can only become infected if your blood, comes in contact with the HIV virus. It is carried in some (but not all) bodily fluids, including blood, semen, vaginal secretions and breast milk. Most people get HIV in one of three ways: having unprotected sex with an infected person; injecting drugs with a needle that’s been used by an infected person; or being born to a mother who’s already infected. You can also contract HIV by receiving infected blood or blood products, a big problem still in countries like China.

5 What, does it do?

HIV batters the body’s defences until diseases which the immune system normally fends off become major threats. The virus may lie dormant for years before symptoms appear. There are more than 25 ‘opportunistic infections’ (also called AIDS-defining illnesses). These include PCP (an infection which attacks the lungs and breathing passages); pneumonia, tuberculosis and MAC (a bacterial infection) which causes fever, weight loss, loss of appetite and diarrhea. Common fungal infections include oral thrush, meningitis and histoplasma capsulatum which can attack the central nervous system.

They are the dead who walk again: the Lazarus men. Invisible to most of us, these are the gay males, now in their 30s and 40s, who first contracted the HIV virus 10, 15 and even 20 years ago. Through a combination of raw courage, determination and powerful new drug therapies, they have managed to keep the disease at bay.

Steve Mueller is one of those survivors. He is a warm, articulate 42-year-old with sharp, sculpted features, a halo of black curls and a hacking cough - the legacy of a battle with HIV which is not yet over. We’re sitting in a crowded lunch spot in the heart of Toronto’s Little Italy, straining to hear each other amidst the jangle of crashing cutlery and the hum of animated conversations ricocheting around the room. ‘I could fill these tables with guys who are gone,’ he nods, glancing quickly across the crowded restaurant.

Steve has been through a lot since he discovered he was HIV positive back in the early 1990s. Then he was teaching psychology at a small community college in the city, enjoying life, financially secure, with a partner who was an affluent executive in the advertising business. Life was good, he was living ‘by the rules’.

Then he got sick and his world shattered. He lost his job; his partner, also HIV positive, died within a year. And then Steve contracted meningitis, one of the often deadly ‘opportunistic diseases’ that strike the battered immune systems of people with HIV.

‘The doctors told me in June 1995 that I was unlikely to see Christmas. I’d gone from 180 to 120 lbs and I was still losing weight. Then I started on the AIDS cocktail; it literally pulled me back from the edge. They called guys like me, who were dying and then bounced back, the Lazarus men.’

Steve’s life, and the lives of many other people with HIV/AIDS (PHAs), was turned around by the discovery of effective ‘antiretroviral’ medications (ARVs) a decade ago. These drugs are not a cure for HIV but they can be a way of controlling the virus, enabling many people to work and lead otherwise normal lives again.

But as important as they’ve been in the West, they have made scarcely a dent in those parts of the world where HIV rages unchecked. Soon after HIV was identified in North America it leapt from the homosexual to the heterosexual community, and then from the gay ‘ghettos’ of Seattle and New York to the slums of Port-au-Prince, Bangkok and Mumbai.

Drowning by numbers Twenty-two million people have died from AIDS-related illnesses since the disease was first discovered just over 20 years ago. Three million people died last year alone.

Thirty-six million people are now infected: 25 million in sub-Saharan Africa. In Botswana, 36% of adults have the HIV virus, in South Africa 20%. (1)

Youth Young people in their teens and twenties are among the most susceptible to the HIV virus. Experimentation with sex and drugs combined with youthful ignorance can be a deadly combination. (2)

* An estimated 10.3 million people aged 15-24 are Living with HIV/AIDS and 50% of all new infections, 7,000 every day, occur among young people.

* According to UNICEF over half of people aged 15-24 in more than a dozen countries, from Bolivia to Vietnam; have never heard of AIDS or have serious misconceptions about how AIDS is spread.

* Young sex workers are at especially high risk-20% of India’s 2 million sex workers are under and nearly 50% are under 18. In Cambodia, 30% of sex workers aged 13-19 are infected with HIV.

Regional AIDS statistics, 2001 (1)

Adult
People with     Newly-     prevalence
Region                       HIV/AIDS     infected       rate

Sub-Saharan Africa         28.1 million  3.4 million     8.4%
N Africa and Middle East     440,000       80,000        0.2%
S and SE Asia              6.1 million     800,000       0.6%
E Asia and Pacific          1 million      270,000       0.1%
Latin America              1.4 million     130,000       0.5%
Caribbean                    420,000       60,000        2.2%
E Europe and Central Asia   1 million      250,000       0.5%
W Europe                     560,000       30,000        0.3%
N America                    940,000       45,000        0.6%
Australia and NZ              15,000         500         0.1%

Total                       40 million    5 million      1.2%
People living with HIV/AIDS, 2001

Total 40.0 million

Men                19.7m
Women              17.6m
Children under 15   2.7m

Note: Table made from bar graph
Newly infected with HIV, 2001

Total 5.0 million

Men                2.5m
Women              1.8m
Children under 15  5.10m

Note: Table made from bar graph
AIDS deaths in 200*

Total 3.0 million

Men                1.3m
Women              1.1m
Children under 15  .58m

Note: Table made from bar graph

*[Unreadable in original source]

Poverty

Black women account for the majority of new cases of HIV and AIDS among women in the United States, and this is particularly true in North Carolina, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In 2003, the HIV infection rate in that state was 14 times higher for black women, compared with white women (MMWR 2005;54:89-94).

An epidemiologic investigation of 31 of the 208 black women aged 18-40 years in North Carolina who were diagnosed with HIV between January 2003 and August 2004 and 101 controls recruited from HIV testing sites showed that most women in both groups engaged in HIV sexual risk behaviors. Those receiving public assistance were more likely to be HIV positive (adjusted odds ratio 7.3), as were those with a history of genital herpes (adjusted OR 10.6). Women who discussed sexual behaviors and history with their male partners were less likely to be HIV positive (adjusted OR 0.6).

The most common reasons given for engaging in risky sexual behaviors were financial dependence on male partners, feeling invincible, low self-esteem coupled with a need to feel loved by a male, and alcohol/drug use.

The findings underscore the need for a multifaceted approach to reducing HIV infection among black women, including programs that encourage delayed sexual activity, condom use, monogamy, and communication.

Improved availability of HIV and STD testing and treatment and attention to the economic constraints that appear to contribute to increased HIV risk in black women are also needed, according to the CDC.

Although HIV/AIDS is continuing to have an enormous impact on the public health of all persons in general, it appears to be taking an unfair toll on the elderly population. Some people classified in this group are sometimes at a much higher risk for contracting and receiving treatment for HIV/AIDS than others. It is to recognize that stereotyping, lack of prevention strategies, misdiagnoses and lack of research are only a few reasons that place the older population at risk, and there are also differences in the levels of education and income. Most of the information about the elderly is case studies and reports with less than 17% having a research basis.

Many elderly persons have experienced poor quality in health care from the beginning of life throughout their adult life. Environmental factors have had an impact and noted as a disproportionate prevalence of acute and chronic diseases, may culminate into disabilities. Mistrust of the health care delivery system and fatalism is associated with less or improper screening procedures of the elderly. Studies have shown that elderly persons may have the tendency to not report illness and physiological changes; delay in reporting symptoms such as edema of the legs, dizziness, fainting spells, or constipation and urinary changes.

Myth #1

HIV and AIDS are the same thing.

Using HIV and AIDS interchangeably is like calling snow flurries a blizzard: You can contract HIV (human immunodeficiency virus) through the exchange of semen, vaginal fluid and blood, but it doesn’t mean that you have AIDS. Doctors consider an HIV-positive person to have AIDS only after the virus has worn down her immune system so much that she’s vulnerable to infections, such as pneumonia, that she could otherwise fight off. (For more basics, log on to aidsmeds.com.)

Myth #2

Knowing who’s “on the DL” will save Black women from HIV.

Learning your partner’s sexual and drug history is important. But the single most effective way to protect yourself is to use a condom every time. Precious Jackson, an AIDS education coordinator at Women Alive in Los Angeles, knows this firsthand. She got the virus while in a relationship with a straight man who didn’t like condoms–and didn’t know he had HIV. “Women must take their health into their own hands, regardless of whom they’re with,” she says. Fretting over whether you can trust a man is pointless, she counsels: “You can trust you.”
Myth #3 women can’t give men HIV.

It’s true that it’s much harder for men to get HIV from women: Men have fewer areas on the penis where the virus can enter the bloodstream–at the urethra (the opening of the tip) and through cuts or sores on the shaft. But if a partner has an untreated STD like syphilis or gonorrhea, which can break the skin, the risk of his contracting HIV or her passing it on greatly increases. This is troubling as some people don’t show symptoms of STDs right away.

Myth #4 Only rich people like Magic Johnson can afford to be so healthy with HIM.