AIDS: Chinese study raises flag over drugs-as-prevention hope

World AIDS Day marks a pandemic that in 2011 claimed 1.7 million lives and led to 2.5 million new HIV infections

PARIS (AFP) - A Chinese study published on World AIDS Day on Saturday says drugs used to curb HIV in infected people also help protect their uninfected partner, but far less effectively than other research has found.

The idea of using antiretrovirals to prevent HIV as well as treat it leapt into the headlines last year when researchers reported stellar results from trials in Africa, Asia and the United States.

In a careful experiment, they recruited 1,763 so-called "serodiscordant" couples, meaning one partner had HIV and the other was uninfected.

If the HIV patient was given antiretroviral drugs, this reduced the risk -- by a massive 96 percent, equal to the effectiveness of a condom -- of transmitting the virus to the partner, the investigators found.

Acting on this breakthrough, the World Health Organisation (WHO) recommended that the infected partner in a "serodiscordant" couple be given antiretrovirals regardless of their count of CD4 immune cells, a benchmark for initiating treatment.

The new study, published in The Lancet, looked back at how Chinese "serodiscordant" couples have fared.

The importance here is that the conditions are real life, and different from medical trials where for ethical reasons, couples are regularly advised about safe sex and their health and wellbeing are more closely monitored.

Researchers led by Yiming Shao, a professor at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention in Beijing, trawled through China's national HIV database.

They examined the state of more than 38,000 "serodiscordant" couples, who were followed for up to nine years, from 2003 to 2011.

Of this total, 24,000 of the couples were under treatment while 14,000 were not under treatment during the period they were studied.
    

Biannual HIV tests were given, and these were recorded along with other data such as how any HIV infection had occurred.

The team found that in the treatment group, protection against HIV for the non-infected partner was 26 percent -- a figure much lower than found in the big trial unveiled last year.

They also discovered that the protection only seemed to last for a year, after which transmission rates were comparable for both the treated and untreated groups of couples.

And treatment-as-prevention was not so effective when the HIV-positive partners were injected drugs or had very high CD4 cell counts.

Shao's team says that even with 26-percent effectiveness, the policy is still good.

But, they say, it also has limitations that depend on the type of patient, although further work is needed to get a fix on this problem.

"These results substantiate the previous evidence... that the treatment-as-prevention approach is a feasible public health prevention strategy on a national scale and in a developing country context," they write.

"It's possible that increasing rates of resistance to treatment in patients with high CD4 level, or decreasing adherence to treatment in patients injecting drugs, are contributing to the reduction in the protective benefit of treatment over time, but this, and other possibilities, will need further investigation."

The study coincided with World AIDS Day, which marks a pandemic that in 2011 claimed 1.7 million lives and led to 2.5 million new HIV infections, according to the latest UN figures.

The number of people living with HIV rose slightly last year to 34 million, up from 33.5 million in 2010, according to UNAIDS.

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Internet Becomes Next Nostradamus for Allergy Season

 
Internet Becomes Next Nostradamus for Allergy Season

While it's believed that Nostradamus' prophecies predicted many historical events, his digital successor, the Internet, may be foreseeing the height of allergy suffering. According to allergist Leonard Bielory, M.D., American College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology (ACAAI) board member, Google search volume is shedding light on the most common allergy symptoms, when searches peak and how they pertain to pollen types.

In his research, being presented at the ACAAI Annual Scientific Meeting, Dr. Bielory found that, due to tree pollens, nasal allergy symptoms are the most common searches from March through May. Symptoms include sneezing, a runny and itchy nose, and stuffiness due to blockage or congestion.

"Allergy sufferers experience heighted allergy symptoms in the spring season, and again during September due to weed pollen and grass season," said Dr. Bielory. "The peak week for all allergy symptom searches is the second week of May, suggesting sufferers may be experiencing both spring and summer allergy symptoms."

Nasal allergy symptoms were also commonly searched during the fall months. The second most common symptom, based on search volume, is eye allergies.

With spring allergy season being only four short months away, the ACAAI advises sufferers to schedule an appointment with their board-certified allergist during the winter months to find relief.

"Treating symptoms early, before they appear, means less suffering," said Dr. Bielory. "An allergist will develop a customized treatment plan to keep you living an active, healthy lifestyle."

According to an ACAAI patient survey, board-certified allergists are successful in treating up to 90 percent of patients with seasonal allergies and 70 to 80 percent with perennial allergies.

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Flu, fever in pregnancy tied to autism risk - study

Flu, fever in pregnancy tied to autism risk - study

WASHINGTON,   (AFP) - Women who had the flu or ran a fever for more than a week during their pregnancy face a greater risk of having a child with an autism spectrum disorder, Danish researchers said Monday.

The study was based on a survey of mothers of nearly 97,000 children aged eight to 14 and born between 1997 and 2003 in Denmark. Only one percent (976) of the children were diagnosed with autism.

Researchers said that mild and common respiratory, sinus, urinary tract or genital infections, as well as feverish episodes or use of antibiotics in mothers during pregnancy were not a strong risk factor for autism.

But children whose mothers reported experiencing a bout of influenza during pregnancy had twice the risk of being diagnosed with autism, while those whose mothers had a fever lasting more than seven days before gestational week 32 were three times more likely to be diagnosed with the disorder.
    

Pregnant women have a weakened immune system during the nine months of gestation.

The study, published in the US journal Pediatrics, also noted a small increase in the risk of autism after the mother used different antibiotics during the pregnancy.

However, the researchers stressed that "we do not know whether the antibiotic treatment itself caused the observed association or whether the antibiotic use functioned as a proxy variable for an underlying disease."

They also stressed that the link between fever during pregnancy and autism could be a "coincidental finding," and required further study.

Given the link found between autism and fever or the flu during pregnancy, the study's authors recommended that pregnant women get a flu shot.

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Spanish doctors, nurses stage mass protest in Madrid

Spanish doctors, nurses stage mass protest in Madrid

MADRID,  (AFP) - Tens of thousands of doctors and medical staff marched in Madrid on Tuesday to protest austerity cuts squeezing the health sector, many wearing their white lab coats and carrying posters with slogans like "Health cuts kill".

Some 75,000 public health professionals in the Madrid region were called to join the protest to mark the last day of a two-day strike against deep spending cuts by the crisis-hobbled national government and plans by the regional government to privatise hospitals and healthcentres.

"The people should not have to pay for private healthcare," said paediatrician Veronica Sanchez of Severo Ochoa hospital, amid a swarm of demonstrators who defied the cold to march through the capital wielding placards with messages such as "We're selling our health" and "Health should be defended, not sold".

Geriatrics specialist Fatima Branas of soon-to-be-privatised Infanta Leonor hospital said it was rare for healthprofessionals to stage a mass protest. But she said the privatisation plans were the last straw.

"We've undergone cuts before and that hasn't made us take to the streets," she said, calling to "put the breaks" on the Madrid regional government's plans to privatise six hospitals and 27 health centres of the 270 in the region.

Madrid public health professionals plan to strike again on December 4 and 5. Specialists have been called to stage an indefinite strike.

At the national level, Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy's government has slashed health spending by seven billion euros ($9.1 billion) a year as part of a campaign to squeeze 102 billion euros out of the crisis-racked country's budget by 2014.

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Top US court orders fresh look at Obamacare challenge

 
Top US court orders fresh look at Obamacare challenge

WASHINGTON,  (AFP) - The US Supreme Court ordered a lower court Monday to review a Christian university's challenge to President Barack Obama's landmark health care reforms on grounds they violate religious freedom.

The Supreme Court said a federal appeals court in Virginia should consider the Liberty University case "in light of" its own ruling in June to uphold the health insurance mandate at the heart of what critics deride as "Obamacare."

Given that the nation's top court has validated the health care reforms -- after hearing challenges by 26 states opposed to the legislation -- it is considered likely that the appeals court will do the same.

The same appeals court had previously dismissed the Virginia case.

Mat Staver, dean of the Liberty University School of Law, said he was very pleased that the high court had sent the case back to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals for another look.

"Today's ruling breathes new life into our challenge to Obamacare. Our fight against Obamacare is far from over," Staver said.

"Congress exceeded its power by forcing every employer to provide federally mandated insurance. But even more shocking is the abortion mandate, which collides with religious freedom and the rights of conscience," Staver argued.

Obama said in February that the government would not require religious organizations to offer free contraception or other services such as abortion on employee health plans, but placed the onus on insurance companies to cover them. The proposed compromise has failed to appease many critics.
    

The university believes that the constitutionality of the employer mandate is at issue, as well as the government's "forced" funding of abortion, citing the protection of religious freedom afforded by the First Amendment.

The Supreme Court in June dismissed Liberty University's challenge when it upheld the controversial health care law, with Chief Justice John Roberts casting the decisive vote.

Obama's reforms seek to extend health insurance to another 30 million Americans.

It bars insurance companies from denying coverage to children with pre-existing conditions, allows parents to keep children on their health care plans until age 26, and prohibits lifetime limits on coverage.

Republicans say the reforms will increase costs, cause insurance premiums to rise and hurt the quality of health care.

Despite the worst fears of the Obama administration, the only restriction made by the high court was on the provision to expand coverage to 16 million more poor Americans through the federal Medicaid program.

The court upheld the clause but ordered the government to withdraw its threat to withhold federal funding from states that do not comply.

Monday's ruling could open the door for the health care law to come back before the Supreme Court next year, but there is no guarantee that it would agree to re-hear the case.

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Toxic cough syrup kills 13 in Pakistan: officials

 
Toxic cough syrup kills 13 in Pakistan: officials

LAHORE, Pakistan,   (AFP) - At least 13 people have died after drinking a toxic cough syrup in the Pakistani city of Lahore, forcing authorities to close pharmacies and a medicine factory, officials said Monday.

The deaths occurred in the low-income Shahdra Town neighbourhood between Friday and Sunday with the victims mostly drug addicts who took the syrup to get high, said local police station chief Atif Zulfiqar.

The scandal comes after around 100 heart patients died in January in Lahore, Pakistan's second largest city, after taking faulty medicine made locally.

"At least 13 people, mostly drug addicts, have died after taking the toxic syrup," Zulfiqar told AFP.

"Some of the victims were found dead in a graveyard where addicts used to take different kind of drugs," he said. Six others died in hospital.

Three pharmacies have been shut down and their owners arrested, he added.
    

The health adviser for Punjab province, Khawaja Salman Rafiq, said the syrup would be confiscated from all pharmacies.

He confirmed the deaths and said inspectors had shut down a drugs factory and sent samples to a laboratory for detailed analysis.

"Punjab chief minister Shahbaz Sharif has ordered an inquiry and a report will be submitted to him within 72 hours," Rafiq said.

Doctor Tahir Khalil at Lahore's main Mayo Hospital said 20 victims aged 15 to 45 had been admitted after drinking the syrup and most had a history of addiction.

"Six people died and six survived and were discharged after treatment. Eight others affected by cough syrup are getting treatment at the hospital. Two of the victims were in critical condition," Khalil told AFP.

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Thai man dies playing video game

BANGKOK (AFP) - A Thai video game addict died in front of his computer after a string of marathon all-night sessions, police said Thursday.

The body of the 24-year-old man was found slumped in his chair in his room in Samut Songkhram province southwest of Bangkok, according to authorities.
    

"He was addicted to games. He hardly went to bed but always played computer games from night until morning," local police officer Chaichana Boonrod told AFP by telephone.

His body will be sent for autopsy to determine the cause of death, police said.

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