Anti-retroviral drugs 'help reduce' HIV transmission
blindbat
Regular
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-13381292
n HIV-positive person who takes anti-retroviral drugs after diagnosis, rather than when their health declines, can cut the risk of spreading the virus to uninfected partners by 96%, according to a study.
The United States National Institutes of Health sampled 1,763 couples in which one partner was infected by HIV.
It was abandoned four years early as the trial was so successful.
The World Health Organization said it was a "crucial development".
The study began in 2005 at 13 sites across across Africa, Asia and the Americas.
HIV-positive patients were split into two groups. In one, individuals were immediately given a course of anti-retroviral drugs.
The other group only received the treatment when their white blood cell count fell.
Both were given counselling on safe sex practices, free condoms and treatment for sexually transmitted infections.
Among those immediately starting anti-retroviral therapy there was only one case of transmission between partners.
In the other group there were 27 HIV transmissions.
'Renewed commitment'
"This breakthrough is a serious game changer and will drive the prevention revolution forward. It makes HIV treatment a new priority prevention option," said Michel Sidibe, executive director of the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/Aids (UNAIDS).
But he warned that it would cost more than ten billion dollars to provide drugs to the ten million people worldwide who are currently not receiving medication for HIV.
The World Health Organization says sexual transmission accounts for 80% of all new HIV infections. Its director general, Dr Margaret Chan, described the announcement as a "crucial development"
She added: "The findings from this study will further strengthen and support the new guidance that WHO is releasing in July to help people living with HIV protect their partners."
The value of anti-retrovirals, in preventing transmission, had been speculated for some time after observational studies, but researchers say this is the first time it has been proven in clinical trials.
Keith Alcorn, from the NAM, an HIV/AIDS charity, said: "This study resoundingly confirms what lots of smaller studies have been telling us for several years.
"International donors cannot ignore the evidence any longer: HIV treatment is a very powerful form of HIV prevention, and could have a major effect on the HIV epidemic in the worst-affected countries.
"What we need now is a renewed commitment to HIV treatment, and studies to show how to get the maximum benefit out of this breakthrough at country level."
Comments
If an antiviral drug works once the illness is full blown, why wouldn't it work when the illness is just getting started?
Because it averages out at a cost of around £17000 a year.
The idea behind it is flawed - it is akin to saying we will store nuclear waste in the street and give everyone a lead suit. Look at how leporasy was irradicated in the UK and nearly TB (before we were decended upon by hoards of diseased 'asylum seekers'). We removed the problem.
When some one has the plague, you do not give the medication to reduce the chances of passing on the plague, you remove them from the general population so they cannot pass it on.
Anyone living with a HIV / Aids infected partner who then goes on to develop the disease themselves should not be offered any treatment. It is akin to playing tennis with nitroglycerine - it might be ok for a while, but when it goes wrong, it will go wrong big style.
If we had never developed HIV / Aids drugs, the amount of people infected in western nations would have been a fraction of what it is now, living with the disease. Anyone here old enough to remember the early and mid 1980's will remember the massive public information campaigns. It was not unusual for the late afternoon childrens TV programmes to finish only for children (and parents) to be bombarded with with adverts on TV as to how we were all going to catch this plague. The evening news every night showed people dying in hospital and how their was (and still is) no cure.
Infection rates dropped - although diagnosis rates increased for a few years, this was down to those who had the disease but had not yet been diagnosed.
Source: http://www.avert.org/uk-statistics.htm
The vast majority of the new diagnosises were amongst the homosexual community. Although it was well known that the vast majority of cases were amongst the male homosexuals and drug users, sexual promiscurity - even safe sex between hetrosexuals dropped massively.
Every household in the UK recieved a leaflet warning of the dangers of unprotected anal sex. Their was even a case of a postman having to walk two miles to deliver a leaflet to a married couple in their late 80's (Scared to Death: From BSE to Global Warming: Why Scares are Costing Us the Earth, Booker, C (2007). Scared to Death: From BSE to Global Warming: Why Scares are Costing Us the Earth . London: Continuum International Publishing Group Ltd.).
The only time comparable in the history of mankind when so much work and money has been spent for one issue could be the development of nuclear technology.
With the coming of drugs to extend the lifespan of those infected, infection rates jumped. This was down to complecency. Had the orriginal cohort of those infected been removed from society and those in the most at risk groups had testing forced upon them, further infection would have been minimal. We should have also undertaken the policy of refusal of entry for those that had been diagnosed and enforced testing for those in high risk catagories and coming from high risk areas.
HIV and Aids were treated as taboo and those that had it masters of their own destructions. The Chief Constable of Greater Manchester Police, James Anderton, described it as "people swirling about in a human cesspit of their own making" - probably quoting Norman Angell, a politician and essay writer from the late 19th century to mid 20th century.
All of this feeling was pushed asside by hand wringers and do gooders - princess diana amongst them. Those who were the feckless, the wreckless and the hedonistic who took no responsibility for their own actions were then viewed as 'victims' by the media. This in itself produced the greatest amount off acceptence of those in society who were habitual injectors of heroin or those who would have unprotected anal sex with several partners an evening, mostly anonamously.
This acceptence of such ways of life, combined with the further ignorance of such groups to the dangers of infection when they found out they could get 'meds' caused an explosion in the number of cases. Referring to the above graph, we can see an exponential increase in diagnosis rates once drugs to manage HIV/Aids came about. People no longer saw the HIV/Aids problem as a one way ticket to a terrible death (although it still is).
In the early 1980's, survival time from diagnosis was around three years. At he current time it is 11-13 years. The same terrible death, only drawn out, giving the walking dead more time to infect the living.
Not only this acceptence within Western culture caused an increase in rates of infection, but the failed policies in Africa, the home of AIDS.
A half arsed attempt at education, trying to increase the supply of anti-retroviral drugs to africans, mismangement of natural resources causing an already weakened population amongst other things and a more than six fold increase in real terms of aid to africa 1980 - 2002 (http://filipspagnoli.wordpress.com/stats-on-human-rights/statistics-on-poverty/statistics-on-international-development-aid/) and no insistance on solid reforms for progress have increased the weakness of a shit hole of a continent.
Most countries in Africa have actually gone backwards since the 1970's, and prolonging the life of those with AIDS prolongs the suffering of the continent as a whole.
AIDS in Africa should be used as a tool to clean and reduce the population - those with the disease, again through enforced testing should be orstacised from society, leaving those behind to rebuild a decent place. If this policy was persued in Africa, it could be AIDS free within five years. With the aid given to Africa that is spent on HIV/Aids treatment, education and prevention was instead spent on testing and segragation, the economic benefits theselves would be apparent almost immediatly - rather than throwing money away maintaing a problem, the problem would cease to exisit.
Now, we can pussy foot around in the hope we can manage the number with HIV / Aids down (which in itself is an impossibility without enforced testing and segrgation) or we can do what needs to be done.
All this money, spent over the last 30 years has been wasted - as I have said, all we a doing at the moment is increasing the cohort of the infected nd they theselve are infecting more and more people.
I will leave you with the words from a very repected international scientist from the mid 1990's.
'If we had spent the amount of money we have spend researching Aids on Cancer research instead, we would more than likely be able to cure 95% of cancers with a simple course of tablets.'
And anyone that knows they have HIV/Aids that spread it to their partner should be charged with manslaughter.
Anyone that have HIV/Aids and have unprotected sex should be charged with "endangering the public" or something like it.
Anyone that have HIV/Aids and do not tell their sexual partner about it before having sex (protected or otherwise)
should also be charged, with what is the question...