News (Updated
November 14, 2010)
[Home]
[Previous
news]
Nov 11, 2010
Nov 11 (Reuters) - The
World Health Organisation (WHO) issued its annual report on Thursday on
tuberculosis, a contagious but curable disease that still kills 1.7 million
people a year, or 4,700 a day, mainly in Asia and Africa.
Tuberculosis, caused by
bacteria, can be cured in six months with antibiotics if detected and treated
early. But it can spread rapidly among people suffering from malnutrition or the
HIV/AIDS infection.
Here are the main points
of the U.N. agency's report:
- There were some 9.4
million news cases of TB in 2009, including 1.1 million cases among people
living with the HIV/AIDS virus.
-
- Globally, rates of TB
incidence, prevalence and mortality have fallen steadily since 1995. Some 41
million people have been successfully treated and up to 6 million lives have
been saved during the period. - The biggest challenge is posed by multiple
drug-resistant strains called MDR-TB, which have emerged because patients do not
always take the expensive first-line drugs as directed.
MDR-TB infected an
estimated 440,000 people in 2008 and is thought to be most widespread in China,
India and Russia, but only a fraction of cases are reported to WHO.
Only 10,000 MDR-TB
patients are believed to get the correct but complex treatment which takes from
18 months to 24 months, often with hospitalisation. This is because countries
often lack laboratories for diagnosis or fail to test for drug resistance. (For
a main story please click on [ID:nLDE6A91S1]) (Compiled by Stephanie Nebehay;
Editing by Jonathan Lynn and Jon Boyle)
11 Nov 2010 Source: IRIN
Based on an observational
study, researchers found that patients newly initiated on ARV treatment who had
also been given Isoniazid Preventative TB therapy (IPT) had about a 50 percent
lower risk of death after their first year of treatment than patients not given
IPT. Isoniazid is a standard first-line TB drug that has more commonly been
given as preventative therapy to HIV-infected patients not yet eligible for ARVs.
According to lead author
Salome Charalambous, research director with the Aurum Institute, a South African
health research NGO, the study provides much-needed evidence to back the
effectiveness of IPT use for ARV patients.
"Until now, the use
of IPT in combination with ARVs has been thought to reduce mortality but it had
not been established," said Charalambous, adding that these assumptions
were based largely on the small reductions in mortality found among HIV-positive
people who had started IPT but not ARVs.
Charalambous said she
expected the findings to be confirmed by early next year when two randomized
controlled trials on the use of IPT within ARV programmes report their findings.
The study is one of
several IPT-themed papers published in a supplement of the journal AIDS by the
Consortium to Respond Effectively to the AIDS/TB Epidemic (CREATE) in
anticipation of the expected 1 December 2010 release of new IPT guidelines by
the World Health Organization. Much of the research featured in the supplement
comes from Aurum's ongoing Thibela TB study involving 80,000 gold miners, which
is looking at whether high IPT uptake can help reduce new TB cases at community
level.
TB remains one of the
leading killers of HIV-positive people. About 70 percent of South African TB
patients are co-infected with HIV.
Myth-busters
According to results of
research also published in the AIDS journal supplement, the greatest barriers to
IPT uptake in
"It's actually quite
crazy that most clinicians will routinely prescribe multi-vitamins when there is
no evidence [to support their therapeutic effect] but with IPT, where there is
so much evidence, there's so much more worry," Charalambous told IRIN/PlusNews.
She added that the
mandatory use of X-rays to diagnose TB, according to South Africa's 2002 IPT
guidelines, could be a barrier as they may not be available everywhere. In
reality, health workers could exclude at least 90 percent of active TB cases
through sputum testing and symptom screening – asking patients if they are
experiencing night sweats, a persistent cough or weight loss.
Research by Alison Grant
from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, also included in the
supplement, found that serious side-effects related to IPT were rare and largely
tied to excessive alcohol consumption.
Charalambous said she
hoped the research – and the new guidelines – would be enough to convert the
unconverted, some of whom she said ranked among the country's most respected
experts.
As part of a new push to
scale up the use of IPT by South African Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi, the
government updated its IPT guidelines in June 2010. In response to some of the
research produced by Aurum, the new guidelines no longer discourage the use of
IPT in ARV patients and have done away with the mandatory chest X-rays and TB
skin tests previously needed to start HIV-positive patients on IPT.
llg/ks/mw
(AFP) – Nov 4, 2010
"HIV is slowly
revealing its secrets... Knowing how an effective immune response against HIV is
generated is an important step toward replicating that response with a
vaccine," said Bruce Walker, co-senior author of a study released Thursday.
"We have a long way
to go before translating this into a treatment for infected patients and a
vaccine to prevent infection, but we are an important step closer," added
the director of the Ragon Institute of Massachusetts
For nearly 20 years,
doctors have known that a small minority of HIV-infected individuals -- about
one in 300 -- are naturally able to suppress viral replication with their immune
system, keeping viral load at extremely low levels.
"We found that, of
the three billion nucleotides in the human genome, just a handful make the
difference between those who can stay healthy in spite of HIV infection and
those who, without treatment, will develop AIDS," said
"Understanding where
this difference occurs allows us to sharpen the focus of our efforts to
ultimately harness the immune system to defend against HIV," he added in
the study published in Friday's issue of Science magazine.
Researchers led by Ragon
Institute's Florencia Pereyra enrolled 3,500 individuals in clinics around the
world, including 2,500 with progressive HIV infection and 1,000 controllers --
HIV infected people resistant to AIDS.
Through a genome-wide
association study, which tests variations at a million points in the human
genome, the researchers identified some 300 sites that were statistically
associated with immune control of HIV.
The sites were all in
regions of chromosome 6 that code for so-called HLA proteins.
Without fully sequencing
that genome region, which was unfeasible given the number of participants, the
researchers developed a process that pinpointed specific amino acids that have a
key role in viral control.
Further testing linked
differences in five amino acids in the HLA-B protein to viral control
mechanisms.
"Our work
demonstrates that these variants could make a crucial difference in the
individual's ability to control HIV by changing how HLA-B presents peptides from
this virus to the immune system," said
Copyright © 2010 AFP. All
rights reserved.
By Alison McCook
In a group of people with
HIV, researchers found eight in 10 had either osteoporosis, the brittle-bone
disease that raises the risk of fractures, or osteopenia, abnormally low bone
mass that could progress to osteoporosis.
It's unclear exactly why
people with HIV are more likely to experience bone loss, study author Dr. Anna
Bonjoch of the Lluita contra la SIDA Foundation in
HIV-positive people have
the same risk factors as anyone else, but the virus itself may affect bones, as
may some drugs used to treat it. However, the fact that some drugs may increase
the risk does not mean people should opt out of taking them, she cautioned.
"To stop the
treatment is not an option," Bonjoch, whose findings appear in the journal
AIDS, said in an e-mail.
Some risk factors for bone
loss -- such as age -- are impossible to change, Bonjoch added, but there are
steps people can take to reduce their risk, or prevent existing problems from
worsening.
For instance, HIV-positive
people can stop smoking, reduce their intake of alcohol, stay physically active,
get enough calcium in their diet, and keep the virus under control.
Osteoporosis is a disease
that increases with age, primarily affecting women over 50. According to the
International Osteoporosis Foundation, one in three women and one in five men
over 50 will experience fractures due to osteoporosis.
The overall rate of low
bone density among the general population varies by age and country, Bonjoch
explained, but likely falls around five percent.
However, in this study,
half of the participants were 42 or younger, suggesting HIV put them at higher
risk of bone problems. Indeed, previous research has suggested that people with
HIV are three times more likely to develop bone loss than the general
population.
From earlier bone scans in
671 HIV-positive patients, Bonjoch and her team found 23 percent had
osteoporosis, and another 48 percent had osteopenia.
Among the 105 participants
who had received more than one scan and were followed for at least five years,
nearly half experienced a worsening of their bone thinning, progressing to
osteopenia or osteoporosis.
Even though women are
typically at higher risk of developing bone loss, men in this study had double
the risk. Other factors linked to bone loss included being underweight, older,
and spending more time on the HIV drug tenofovir.
These risk factors match
what previous studies have shown, Dr. Todd Brown of
But the rate of bone loss
is significantly higher, he said, suggesting the patients were not
representative of the overall HIV population.
One explanation could be
that patients with bone loss might be more likely to get scans, Brown said.
But the general trend is
clear, he added: "The percentage of patients with osteoporosis with HIV
infection is probably higher than you would expect in an HIV-negative
population."
Brown said HIV patients
also appear at higher risk of heart disease, cancer, kidney problems, diabetes,
and cognitive decline. "All these big chronic diseases that increase with
age do occur earlier in HIV," he said.
SOURCE: link.reuters.com/cyr94q
AIDS, October 31, 2010.
* Colour-coded pack easy
to use for mothers who can't read
* Designed as a "one
stop shop" to prevent HIV transmission
* UNICEF's $8 mln project
to start in four African countries (Adds fresh quotes, global HIV/AIDS numbers)
By Kate Kelland, Health
and Science Correspondent
LONDON, Nov 9 (Reuters) -
It's no great medical breakthrough, just a simple colour-coded box packed with
HIV drugs and pictures, but its backers UNICEF hope it may help finally end
transmission of the often deadly virus to babies.
The mother-baby pack,
dubbed "innovation for an HIV-free generation" will be distributed to
30,000 pregnant women in
It contains all the
medicines and instructions needed to protect an HIV-infected mother and her
newborn, even if she never visits a health clinic again until after the baby is
born, and even if she can't read properly.
"We don't need any
scientific breakthroughs or new technology to tackle this problem," said
Jimmy Kolker, head of HIV and AIDS at the United Nations children's fund
(UNICEF). "What we need is a way to empower women to take charge of their
own care."
Evidence in developed
countries, where there is now virtually no transmission of the human
immunodeficiency virus (HIV) that causes AIDS from mothers to babies, shows
that, as Kolker says, all the medicines and healthcare knowledge are already
there to halt it worldwide.
It is the logistics of
getting the right drugs to the right people at the right time that is proving
the biggest barrier in poorer countries to eliminating mother-to-child HIV
transmission -- a goal the United Nations has said it wants to reach by 2015.
"In the developed
world, there are now very few babies born HIV positive, but in
More than 50 percent of
HIV-positive women in sub-Saharan Africa in 2008 did not get the drugs they
needed to prevent transmission of the virus to their children, according to data
from the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS).
The AIDS virus infects
about 33.4 million people around the world and 22.4 million of them live in
sub-Saharan
The World Health
Organisation says an estimated 430,000 children were newly infected with HIV in
2008, the vast majority of them through mother-to-child transmission. Yet this
kind of spread of the disease is preventable if services are available.
Children born with HIV
face lifelong disease and, if they're lucky, lifelong medication. In
"We're still missing
a lot of mothers because they don't come back to the clinics, or because the
clinics are short of drug supplies, or because the mothers don't take the drugs
when they're supposed to," said Kolker.
At around $70 per box, the
mother-baby pack costs less than half of what it would take to give even a year
of drug treatment to an HIV positive baby, UNICEF says.
"It's cost-effective
from every point of view," said Kolker. "It's something that can be
done at a village level and followed up by a community health worker or mothers
group. It doesn't need a nurse or doctor to follow through."
The pack will also
simplify the procurement, ordering and distribution of drugs and healthcare
since it is a one-stop-shop, with a complete course of medicines and
instructions to halt mother-to-child HIV transmission.
The pack is divided into
three sections of blue for drugs to be taken during pregnancy, yellow for
medicines needed during labour and delivery and pink for drugs needed for mother
and baby after delivery.
The colour-coding and a
series of simple pictures are designed to help women with low levels of literacy
understand when and in what doses to take the medicines.
UNICEF's $8.0 million
pilot project in the first four countries is planned in three phases, with
around 30,000 packs to be distributed in each phase to reach almost 100,000
women by the middle of 2011.
If it proves successful,
Kolker said UNICEF plans to scale the project up in these countries and widen it
to include more.
"We don't want to do
this without being really sure that it works," he said. "But one of
the things that is most promising about this project is that there are already a
number of countries who want to be next in line." (Editing by Peter Graff)
The U.S. Food and Drug
Administration announced late on Wednesday it had approved Egrifta, a drug
developed by the Montreal-based company to treat excess abdominal fat in HIV
patients.
Theratechnologies' stock
rose 75 Canadian cents to C$5.75 on the Toronto Stock Exchange on Thursday
shortly after markets opened.
The shares soared 84
percent on May 28 after a
The injectable drug treats
lipodystrophy, a condition in which excess fat develops in different areas of
the body, most notably around the liver, stomach and other abdominal organs.
The condition is
associated with many antiretroviral drugs used to treat HIV, the FDA press
release said on Wednesday.
"We've all been
waiting for this day for many years," Chief Executive Yves Rosconi said
during a conference call with analysts on Thursday.
"Marketing approval
for Egrifta was granted as the first and only treatment approved to reduce
excess abdominal fat in HIV-infected patients with lipodystrophy," said
Rosconi, who was making his last conference call before retiring from the
company.
He did not give a specific
date for when Egrifta will begin selling. The drug will be marketed by Merck
KGaA's EMD Serono division in the
Theratechnologies said
during the call that its next objective was to focus on commercializing Egrifta
in other markets outside the
Nov 8, 2010
MUMBAI (Reuters) -
Glenmark Pharmaceuticals said on Monday it has completed phase-III trials for
its Crofelemer drug, sending its shares up more than 4 percent in early trades.
The drug, used in the
treatment of HIV-associated diarrhoea, would be launched in 140 countries, it
said in a statement.
Glenmark has developed
Crofelemer with its partners Napo Pharmaceuticals and Salix Pharmaceuticals, it
said.
The Mumbai-based drugmaker
has exclusive marketing and distribution rights to this compound across 140
countries and is also the sole global supplier of active pharmaceutical
ingredients except in
Glenmark would invest
significant resources to fast-track its development plan to ensure early
regulatory approvals for Crofelemer and launch it in most of the markets, Glenn
Saldanha, chief executive and managing director, Glenmark, said in a statement.
The firm expects approval
for the drug in
At 9:41 a.m., shares of
Glenmark Pharmaceuticals were trading at 373.10 rupees, up 2.51 percent in a
weak Mumbai market.
(Reporting by Kaustubh
Kulkarni; Editing by Sunil Nair)