HIV •

African Americans Are Less Likely To Receive HIV Medical Care

February 5, 2016 By Jason Leathers Leave a Comment

Black men with HIV are less likely than whites and Hispanics to receive consistent care.

CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) recently reported that African Americans are less likely to receive HIV medical care. From 2011 to 2013, blacks living in the United States less frequently received ongoing HIV medical care than patients of other ethnicities, according to the same research.

African American males were less likely to receive consistent medical care than African American females (35 percent and 44 percent, respectively). Among African Americans, receiving consistent HIV care was highest among those whose HIV infections were attributable to heterosexual contact. Those who got consistent HIV medical care for three years were considered consistently retained in care.

From 2012 to 2014, the CDC funded HIV testing, linkage to care, partner services and behavioral risk reduction programs through 61 state and local health departments and 151 community-based organizations.

To gauge the impact of these interventions, researchers examined data collected from the National HIV Prevention Program Monitoring and Evaluation concerning testing events and related services collected during this time period.

The researchers then determined the rate of HIV test positivity and linkage to HIV care within 90 days among non-Hispanic black women with new infection.

The number of annual CDC-funded testing events during this time period ranged from 702,328 to 793,894, and women aged 20 to 29 years accounted for 44.7% of all tests among black women. New diagnoses decreased 17% from 2012 to 2014; however, HIV test positivity rates remained relatively similar year to year.

Among black women with newly diagnosed infection, linkage to care within 90 days of diagnoses increased from a rate of 33.8% in 2012 to 50.1% in 2014. The researchers wrote that while these increases are beneficial to black women with newly diagnosed HIV, more interventions within the group may be needed to reach the 85% linkage rate targeted by the National HIV/AIDS Strategy.

The experts pointed out that, in order to continue to reduce HIV-related health disparities for black females in the United States, increasing HIV testing efforts among this group is needed to increase the percentage of black females living with HIV who are aware of their status.

Dr. Eugene McCray, the Director of the Division of HIV/AIDS Prevention sustains that,

in order to stop the HIV epidemic among African Americans, we must tackle the social inequities influencing HIV health outcomes and the disparities that persist at every stage of the continuum of HIV care, including identifying approaches to promote early linkage to and retention in care.

To help, the CDC is crafting a high-impact prevention approach that is funding HIV prevention services that target gay, bisexual and transgender youth of color.

The efforts include PrEP and HIV treatment as prevention, along with nearly $277 million in grants over five years.

Image Sources: hivos.org; projectq.us.

HIV Study Could Change Treatment For The Disease

May 30, 2015 By Deborah Nielsen Leave a Comment

People with HIV must start taking drugs to fight the virus which causes AIDS immediately after they’re diagnosed, a new international research finds.

Scientists who carried out the trial were very excited by the health benefits of immediate use of HIV medicine that they closed the study early so they could give out the drugs to all participants.

This discovery could change World Health Organization guidelines on the best method to treat people with HIV, experts explain. Currently, WHO is recommending that HIV patients not begin treatment before their immune system is starting to be affected.

“We now have clear-cut proof that it is of significantly greater health benefit to an HIV-infected person to start antiretroviral therapy sooner rather than later. “Moreover, early therapy conveys a double benefit, not only improving the health of individuals but at the same time, by lowering their viral load, reducing the risk they will transmit HIV to others. These findings have global implications for the treatment of HIV,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, mentioned in a statement.

The study begun back in 2011. Around 4,700 HIV-infected women and men took participated at 215 sites in 35 countries. Around half were randomly designated to start drug treatment right away, while the other half didn’t receive the drugs until their immune systems showed signs of problems.

As of March, scientists found 41 cases of severe health problems, like death or progression to AIDS, in some of those who started the treatment immediately, to 86 in those who started taking the medications later. Patients who were on the drugs earlier also progressed better regardless to where they lived and the wealth of their countries.

While Fauci explained the results have “global implications,” their impact will be less important in advanced nations where HIV-infected people are usually diagnosed early and start taking the medications immediately after that.

Even in the United States, where official guidelines advise that newly diagnosed patients start taking the medications right away, some patients who suffer of a less advanced disease opt not to take the drugs right away.

They have a variety of reasons for doing this, explained Dr. Tanya Ellman, an HIV specialist and instructor at Columbia University Medical Center in New York City. Ellman added the new report is supporting the existing federal recommendation and could lead to an expansion of WHO guidelines.

Image Source: Medical News Today

People With HIV Could Cut Organ Demand

May 16, 2015 By Deborah Nielsen Leave a Comment

People who die after being infected with HIV can be a potential source for transplantation with more than 400 annual donors in the United States. for the benefit of people who got the infection but need organs to live, according to researchers who explained there would be an important benefit for non-infected patients also on the waiting-list.

The research assessed the level of quality that potential organs from HIV-infected deceased donors have. They discovered for example that HIV-associated kidney disease would need to be evaluated for future kidney donation while in the case of the livers they revealed to be of better transplant quality.

Until recently, explain the authors who published their results in the American Journal of Transplantation, HIV-infected patients were labeled ineligible to get an organ transplant, but they can now access the organs if their body has a “good renal and liver outcomes” compared with remaining on the list.

In spite of this, the US disparity between the numbers of patients on the waiting list and available organs “can disproportionately affect HIV-infected patients”. This group of patients needing organs are more likely to die on the list than those who are HIV-negative.

America’s HIV Organ Policy Equity (HOPE) Act was signed into law in November of 2013 to allow research into organ donations from one person with HIV to another.

“The findings are significant because there are not enough organ donors in the US to meet the needs of all of the patients who might benefit from life-saving organ transplants”, said Dr. Emily Blumberg, the senior author of the study and professor in infectious diseases at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.

“Some of the patients waiting for organsare infected with HIV but never make it to transplant because they either die while waiting or become too sick to be transplanted. HIV patients who undergo transplantation generally do well, so it is important to continue to look for ways to improve access to transplantation for them”, she said.

The risk of HIV transmission has made illegal the donation to uninfected people, but some patients could still benefit from organ supply by turning to HIV-infected deceased donors. Expanding the options for people who are already infected would cut the demand on organs offered by HIV-free donors.

Approximately 123,000 people are currently waiting for an organ on the US list for transplants. The wait is long. For example, for almost half of last year just 11,844 people got organ transplants.

Image Source: The ODRC

Novel Study Intends To Test Survivors’ Blood To Treat Ebola Patients

November 20, 2014 By Jason Leathers Leave a Comment

An alliance of companies along with some aid groups revealed plans Tuesday to test experimental medications and gather blood plasma from Ebola survivors to treat new sufferers of the disease in West Africa.

Plasma from survivors contains antibodies — substances the immune system makes to brawl the disease. A few Ebola patients have gotten survivor plasma and recuperated, however specialists say there is no real way to know whether it truly helps without a study like the one they are going to begin this month.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is giving $5.7 million to scale up creation of the medicines for the task in Guinea and other Ebola-affected countries in Africa. More than twelve organizations, colleges, and others are helping supplies, staff and money, and are working with the countries and the World Health Organization on particular systems and areas.

Other than helping Ebola patients now, plasma “could be a gizmo for a future outbreak too” from diverse viruses, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates said in an interview with The Associated Press.

“You may not have medications and vaccines for some new thing” and it would be excellent to have capacities set up to gather and provide plasma to fill the crevice until those different apparatuses can be produced, he said.

Until now, there are no medications or vaccines approved for Ebola, which has taken the lives of around 5,000 individuals this year in West Africa, the vast majority of them in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. Former week, doctors without borders also said it would host studies of experimental treatments and plasma at 3 of its West Africa treatment centers.

The medications to be tested by both groups contain brincidofovir, an antiviral drug that has been attempted in a couple of Ebola cases as such. Its producer, North Carolina-based Chimerix Inc., created it to treat different sorts of viruses and lab tests propose it may battle Ebola.

“We said to them, ‘well, if money was no constraint, what amount might you be able to make?’ and they provided us a number,” Gates said. “So we said, ‘alright, we’ll take the chance that perhaps no one will ever purchase this from you. So we’ll help you expand the production.'”

Making plasma accessible is an intricate errand. Plasma is the lucid part of blood, and the part that contains antibodies. In Africa, donors’ blood will be cleaned via machine to eliminate little amounts of plasma and give back the rest of the blood to the benefactor — a process that permits somebody to give as frequently as every two weeks.

One of the first patients effectively treated for Ebola in the United States — Dr. Kent Brantly, aid worker — got plasma from a 14-year-old boy he treated in Africa, where he was tainted. Brantly has given plasma a few times to Ebola patients in the United States.

However, a plasma beneficiary must have a compatible blood type as the giver. Also, survivors who give plasma should be tested to verify they are cured of Ebola and don’t have other illnesses, for example, hepatitis, syphilis or HIV. The Africa study will make an added stride — utilization of a trial framework by Cerus Corp. for inactivating viruses in blood.

Dr. Ada Igonoh, a specialist in Nigeria who got Ebola from a patient and recuperated, hopes to give plasma and volunteer others for the study.

“Survivors will be ready if they comprehend the objective,” she said.

Recently, Igonoh and Brantly met with Gates to talk about the task at an American Society of Tropical Medicine & Hygiene gathering in New Orleans.

Dr. Luciana Borio, who is heading the Food and Drug Administration’s Ebola reaction, talked at the meeting about plasma. Despite the fact that it appeared to help sometimes, “The upshot is that we don’t generally know whether it helps and to what degree it may help,” she said.

“We’d love to not be in the same circumstance later on,” and a study is the best way to know beyond any doubt, she said.

A Northeast Ohio organization, Clinical Research Management Inc., that agreement with sponsors to run clinical trials, will lead the plasma study in Africa. Plasma will be gathered through three bloodmobiles gave by one more Microsoft co-founder, Paul G. Allen, and the Greenbaum Foundation. The bloodmobiles have been moved to Africa.

The US Armed Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) will give Ebola testing to the study. A few colleges will help, as will the Blood Centers of America and the Safe Blood for Africa Foundation. Several other organizations contribute utensils and supplies.

Preterm Complications, Major Cause of Death In Infants: Study Reveals

November 17, 2014 By Germaine Hicks Leave a Comment

The preterm birth complications now outrank all other reasons of death for infants. Out of more than 6.3 million deaths of infants under age five in 2013, about 1 million occurred because of preterm issues. The study was published on 17^th Nov, the World’s Prematurity Day.

The recent study shows up in the Lancet medical journal. It’s a synergistic collaboration of scientists from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and the World Health Organization (WHO)..

The major part of the deaths constitutes direct preterm births complications happened in the initial 28-days of life – with another 125,000 deaths happening between one month and five years.

“Throughout the last few years the extent of deaths because of preterm births has been expanding. The purpose behind this is that we don’t generally have significant intercessions set up to evade preterm births – and second, to oversee them in most groups where they happen, Dr. Andres de Francisco, interval official executive of the Geneva-based Partnership for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health, said.

Preterm birth complications are a global issue, he added.

“We have countries in Africa, for instance – Nigeria – or in Asia – India and Pakistan – that have tremendously high numbers of children that are dying due to preterm births. Anyhow, this is not just an issue in developing nations. This is additionally an issue that affects developed nations, too.”

India really beat the rundown, emulated by Nigeria, Pakistan, the DRC, China, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Ethiopia, Angola and Kenya. Specialists caution the Ebola flare-up in West Africa raises the danger of preterm complications in the affected countries.

The ascent in deaths from preterm birth complications really harmonizes with a staged decrease in the overall death rate of kids under five.

“Mortality is declining by around 3.9% every year, which is an extremely noteworthy decline of mortality – and it’s because of a ton of interventions that we have in stock, including reducing the mortality because of contagious ailments, for example, pneumonia, diarrhea and malaria, among others,” he said.

A portion of the intercessions credited for the death rate decrease include vaccines, bed nets, antibiotics, anti-malarial and HIV treatments.

Yet Dr. de Francisco said the death rate for preterm children has declined by a much diminutive rate of 2% a year. The major reason, he says, is an absence of sufficient intercessions. Furthermore, at this moment, it’s not clear what the best intercessions are, besides addressing obesity, HBP and hypertension.

Moreover, the study said generally its not fully recognized what triggers preterm labor – and about 50% of preterm births happen impulsively.

“This is why, reason for mortality needs to be contemplated significantly and in much more concentrated way. Since if we don’t know the reasons – if we don’t know the factors – pregnancy is going to end in a preterm birth. Furthermore this needs to be the center of escalated research,” de Francisco said.

An intensive research amounting $250-million is getting underway through four noteworthy activities: the Global Coalition to Advance Preterm Birth Research; the March of Dimes; the University of California at San Francisco’s Preterm Birth Initiative; and the Global Alliance to Prevent Prematurity and Stillbirth.

“If we support these research programs, in the following five years or so, we will be able to have intercessions that are going to help the lessening of mortality in these little children,” he said.

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