Results tagged “infection risk” from AIDS & HIV

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.

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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LOS ANGELES, Feb. 8 /PRNewswire/ -- Effective immediately, AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF), the largest AIDS healthcare, prevention and education provider in the United States which operates free AIDS treatment clinics in the US, Africa, Latin America/Caribbean and Asia, including 13 healthcare centers in California and Florida, has banned pharmaceutical sales representatives from Pfizer Inc., the world's largest drug company, from calling on AHF's medical providers and staff at its healthcare centers. Two weeks ago, AHF filed a lawsuit against Pfizer, the manufacturer of the blockbuster erectile-dysfunction (ED) drug, Viagra (sildenafil citrate), over its irresponsible marketing tactics and advertising for the company's drug.

AHF's move today reinforces its concern over Pfizer's questionable marketing tactics for Viagra that the Foundation believes encourages the recreational use of the popular ED drug, as well as the Foundation's disappointment over the drug giant's lack of response over the past year to repeated concerns raised by AHF. In its letter today (via fax & first class mail) to Pfizer CEO Jeffrey Kindler, AIDS Healthcare Foundation President Michael Weinstein and AHF's Chief of Medicine, Charles Farthing, M.D., stated:

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.

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

HealthDay News -- Researchers report that they've developed a test that could give doctors a much clearer idea about which drugs to prescribe for patients infected with HIV.

Doctors already use a variety of tests to gauge whether the strains of HIV within a patient are immune to different types of AIDS medications. But the developers of this new test say their version is much more sensitive and can detect smaller levels of resistance to drugs in the bloodstream.

While more research is needed and it will take at least two years for a new test to become widely available, the development will hopefully allow doctors "to make an informed selection of an HIV drug and delay resistance," said study author Dr. Feng Gao, an associate professor at Duke University. "Patients can stay healthier for a longer time."

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.

A court convicted five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor Tuesday of deliberately infecting 400 children with HIV and sentenced them to death, despite scientific evidence the youngsters had the virus before the medical workers came to Libya.

The United States and Europe reacted with outrage to the verdict, which prolongs a case that has hurt Libya's ties to the West. The six co-defendants already have served seven years in jail.

Earlier this month, an analysis of HIV and hepatitis virus samples taken from some of the children concluded the viral strains were circulating at the hospital where they were treated well before the nurses and doctor arrived in March 1998, according to research published by the journal Nature.

There is widespread anger in Libya over the HIV infections, and the sentence brought cheers. The Libyan press has long depicted the medical workers as guilty.

Five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor could face the firing squad if a Libyan court convicts them on Tuesday on charges of deliberately infecting hundreds of Libyan children with HIV.

Concluding a retrial regarded by the outside world as a test of justice in Libya, the court will make a decision that, either way, is likely to have repercussions on the north Africa's gradual rapprochement with the West.

The six are accused of intentionally infecting 426 Libyan children with HIV at a hospital in Benghazi in the late 1990s. The prosecution has demanded the death penalty.

Using hormonal contraception does not appear to increase women's overall risk of contracting the AIDS virus, according to a U.S. National Institutes of Health study published on Thursday.

The study, published on the Web site of the journal "AIDS," followed thousands of women in Africa and Asia and compared their patterns of contraceptive use to their risk of infection with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.

"Understanding whether hormonal contraceptive use alters the risk of HIV acquisition among women is a critical public health issue," the study authors wrote.

Some 6,000 women, in Uganda, Zimbabwe and Thailand enrolled in the study were offered a choice of the most commonly prescribed forms of hormonal contraception, birth control pills or DMPA (depot-medroxyprogesterone acetate) injections, as well as condoms.

Malaria is fueling the spread of AIDS in Africa by boosting the HIV in people's bodies for weeks at a time, says a study that pins down the deadly interplay between the dual scourges.

It's a vicious cycle as people weakened by HIV are, in turn, more vulnerable to malaria.

University of Washington researchers who estimated the impact of the overlapping infections concluded that the interaction could be blamed for thousands of HIV infections and almost a million bouts of malaria over two decades in just one part of Kenya.

The research, published in Friday's edition of the journal Science, highlights the need for a joint attack on both epidemics.

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Afghanistan's booming opium trade is a huge concern for Pakistan as it confronts the spread of HIV/AIDS, especially among intravenous drug users, Pakistan's minister of health said on Wednesday.

Pakistan recorded its first case of HIV infection in 1987 and the number of confirmed cases is now 3,556 -- of whom more than 300 have developed AIDS -- but experts say the true figure could be many times higher.

Health Minister Mohammad Naseer Khan said Pakistan was a low-prevalence but high-risk country when it came to AIDS.

The government was committed to the fight against the disease but efforts had to be intensified to tackle Afghanistan's booming output of opium -- the raw material for heroin, he said.

Cases of West Virginia inmates with HIV and AIDS have dwindled in recent years, but prevention advocates are still urging prisons to distribute condoms to their inmates.

Condoms are banned or unavailable in 95 percent of the country's prisons, including those in West Virginia. A recent report from the National Minority AIDS Council says offering condoms to inmates can cut the risk of spreading the deadly virus.

Joe Thornton, deputy cabinet secretary for the state Department of Military Affairs and Public Safety, said there have been no serious discussions about distributing condoms in prisons lately and that the state would likely oppose such an initiative.

When Linda learned that she and her newborn daughter were HIV-positive, the shocked Oakland woman went on a five-year drug and alcohol binge.

"I thought I was going to die soon and my baby was going to die -- I'd given her a death sentence," Linda said. "I felt worthless."

But she didn't die. Linda, 37, who asked that her last name be withheld, ultimately sought help for her addiction to crack cocaine and got HIV counseling. Now drug-free, she's seen her daughter grow into a confident 17-year-old. Both say many people remain woefully ignorant about what the federal Centers for Disease Control calls "an epidemic in the African American community."

In September 2006, CDC published revised recommendations for human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) testing in health-care settings to 1) increase early detection of HIV infection by expanding HIV screening of patients and 2) improve access to HIV care and prevention services (e.g., by conducting screening in locations such as emergency departments and urgent-care facilities, where persons who do not otherwise access HIV testing seek health-care services) (1).

HIV screening is now recommended for patients aged 13--64 years in all health-care settings after patients are notified that testing will be performed unless they decline (opt-out screening). This represents a substantial change from earlier recommendations to 1) offer HIV testing routinely to all patients only in health-care settings with high HIV prevalence and 2) conduct targeted screening on the basis of risk behaviors for patients in low-prevalence settings (2). This report examines HIV and acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) case reporting in South Carolina before the 2006 recommendations were published.

MOSCOW (AFP) - Russia has registered over 363,000 people living with HIV-AIDS, including 2,322 children, chief medical doctor Gennady Onishchenko said, a news agency has reported.

Just under half of the HIV-positive children, 1,059, were infected before birth by their mothers, Onishchenko was quoted as saying by RIA Novosti.

He also said 27,250 new cases of HIV infection had been registered since the start of the year.

"Nearly 60 percent of the infections are concentrated in 13 Russian regions, particularly Sverdlovsk, Moscow, Samara and Irkutsk, as well as the cities of Moscow and St. Petersburg," Onishchenko said, ITAR-TASS reported.

MANILA, Nov. 30 (Xinhua) -- The World Health Organization (WHO)warned here on Thursday that the HIV/AIDS situation in Asia will further worsen unless political leaders meet their promises to step up efforts to stop the virus from spreading.

"The number of people living with HIV continues to grow," WHO Regional Director for the Western Pacific Shigeru Omi said in a report issued by the international health body.

"High-risk behavior, such as injecting drug use, unprotected paid sex and unprotected sex between men, is especially evident in the HIV epidemics in some regions, including Asia," he added.

BEIJING (AFP) - China is experiencing a surge in the number of new HIV/AIDS infections as the virus spreads from high-risk groups to the general public.

There were 183,733 people confirmed with HIV/AIDS at the end of October, the health ministry said on its website, with the state-run press reporting the number was 27.5 percent higher than at the end of 2005.

The ministry did not provide comparative figures, but Xinhua news agency said there were 39,644 extra confirmed cases of HIV/AIDS in China in the first 10 months of the year, compared with a total of 144,089 at the end of 2005.

THE HAGUE (AFP) - The number of people dying from AIDS each year in the Netherlands has fallen considerably since the introduction of combination therapies a decade ago, but the rate of new HIV infections continues to rise, a new report warned.

The number of people diagnosed with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) in 2006 was 950, up 329 from 1996, the HIV Monitoring foundation's annual report stated.

Homosexual sex was the leading cause of transmission, affecting 500 people in 2006. "The HIV epidemic is not under control in the male homosexual community in the Netherlands," the foundation warned. "As well as combination therapy, prevention is essential," it added.