News (Updated July 16, 2006)
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Mon Jul 10, 2006 01:29 PM ET
By Anne Harding
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Sexually experienced middle- and high-school teenagers with higher levels of depressive symptoms are more likely to engage in risky sexual behavior, a new study shows.
"The study findings underscore that it is important for parents to be familiar with signs of depression among adolescent boys and girls," Dr. Jocelyn A. Lehrer of the University of California, San Francisco, the study's lead author, told Reuters Health. "In addition to providing strong and consistent emotional support to their teens, it is important for parents to encourage and actively support their teens in seeking mental health care when needed."
As many as 20% of adolescents may experience major depression, Lehrer and her team note in the July issue of the medical journal Pediatrics. Half of new cases of sexually transmitted infections occur in adolescents, while teens also face a disproportionate risk of contracting HIV.
To investigate whether symptoms of depression might be linked to sexual risk taking, Lehrer and her colleagues analyzed results of a large national study of adolescent health that included 4,152 boys and girls who were interviewed at home in 1995 and once again a year later. Interviewers assessed study participants' levels of depressive symptoms using a 19-item questionnaire.
The higher boys scored on the test at the first interview, the more likely they were to report a year later that they had not used condoms or any other type of birth control the last time they had sex, Lehrer and her colleagues found. They were also more likely to have used drugs or alcohol before their last sexual encounter.
Girls who scored high on the test were less likely to have used birth control or condoms the last time they had sex, and were more likely to have had three or more sexual partners over the previous year.
While other studies have suggested a link between depression and risky sex, Lehrer and her team note, their analysis is unique because it looked at a large, nationally representative sample over a one-year period.
There are many possible reasons why teens with symptoms of depression might be more likely to take sexual risks, Lehrer noted. "Youth who are both emotionally distressed and socially isolated may be more likely to seek or be successfully pressured into sexual activity, in the name of some kind of shared intimacy, or to maintain relationships that they value," she told Reuters Health. Teens may also use sex as a way to cope with their symptoms of depression, Lehrer added.
The findings provide "only further reason to increase our efforts to promote mental health, and to prevent, identify and treat depressive symptoms and disorders among adolescents," she concluded.
SOURCE: Pediatrics, July 2006.
Wed Jul 12, 2006 09:06 PM ET
By Susan Heavey and Lisa Richwine
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The first once-a-day AIDS pill that combines three current medicines into a single tablet won U.S. approval on Wednesday, offering patients a more convenient alternative to current multiple drug cocktails.
Atripla, which contains Bristol-Myers Squibb Co.'s drug Sustiva and Gilead Inc.'s medicines Viread and Emtriva, is latest step in making it easier for AIDS patients to keep the human immunodeficiency virus or HIV in check -- a process that once included dozens of daily pills.
"It's one thing to have medicine available, but it will only be effective when people can indeed take it as they are supposed to," U.S. Food and Drug Administration Deputy Commissioner Murray Lumpkin told reporters.
Experts hope the convenience of a single, once-daily pill will help patients continue treatment and take their medicines on schedule, both keys to keeping HIV from developing resistance to drugs.
In the early days of AIDS treatment, patients had to take dozens of pills at different times each day, some with or without food. Experts soon realized that was too difficult.
The three-drug combination found in Atripla is the most commonly prescribed regimen for U.S. patients starting HIV treatment, said Norbert Bischofberger, Gilead's executive vice president of research and development, in an interview.
The new pill "is a really nice advance. You can't make it any simpler," Bischofberger told Reuters, adding other possible combination pills are in the works.
Atripla will cost $1,150.88 for a 30-day supply and will be available within seven business days, the drugmakers said.
Gilead's Viread and Emtriva are already available as a combination pill called Truvada, which launched last year and is on track to reach $1 billion in 2006 sales.
Gilead shares were off 6 cents to $61.70 on Nasdaq in late afternoon trade amid a general retreat in U.S. stocks. Shares of Bristol were off 40 cents, or 1.6 percent, at $25.08 on the New York Stock Exchange. The approval had been widely anticipated.
None of the current AIDS-fighting medicines cure the disease, but they can suppress the virus for years. The three drugs in the new pill work by blocking reverse transcriptase, an enzyme HIV needs to replicate.
Wednesday's approval also makes the drug available for a U.S. program to fight AIDS in 15 other countries.
Close to 40 million people worldwide have the virus, which causes acquired immune deficiency syndrome or AIDS. About 1 million Americans have been diagnosed as having the virus, according to United Nations' estimates.
Merck & Co Inc markets Bristol's Sustiva in most developing countries under the brand Stocrin. Bristol holds marketing rights for the United States, Canada and some European nations.
The price for the drug in countries hit hardest by the disease has not been set, Merck said in a statement, but it likely will be at a level where the company would not profit.
As with all AIDS medicines, patients may develop resistance and need to switch to another combination. Atripla's side effects may include abnormal dreams, hallucinations and kidney problems. Women who take it should not become pregnant because it may cause birth defects.
In June, the FDA approved another three-in-one AIDS pill for use in poor countries under a global relief plan. That product contains generic versions of older HIV drugs, and the combination is not sold in the United States.
Mon Jul 10, 2006 08:06 PM ET
By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Correspondent
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Circumcising men routinely across Africa could prevent millions of deaths from AIDS, World Health Organization researchers and colleagues reported on Monday.
They analyzed data from trials that showed men who had been circumcised had a significantly lower risk of infection with the AIDS virus, and calculated that if all men were circumcised over the next 10 years, some two million new infections and around 300,000 deaths could be avoided.
Researchers believe circumcision helps cut infection risk because the foreskin is covered in cells the virus seems able to easily infect. The virus may also survive better in a warm, wet environment like that found beneath a foreskin.
So if men were circumcised, fewer would become infected and thus could not infect their female partners.
The human immunodeficiency virus or HIV, which causes AIDS, now infects close to 40 million people and has killed another 25 million. It mostly affects sub-Saharan Africa and the main mode of transmission is sex between a man and a woman.
Several studies have suggested that men who are circumcised have a lower rate of HIV infection. This has been especially noticeable in some parts of Africa, where some groups are routinely circumcised while neighboring groups are not.
Last year, Dr. Bertran Auvert of the French National Research Agency INSERM and colleagues at WHO found that circumcised men in South Africa were 65 percent less likely to become infected with the deadly and incurable virus.
His team then did an analysis to see what would happen if all African men were circumcised.
"In West Africa, male circumcision is common and the prevalence of HIV is low, while in southern Africa the reverse is true," they wrote in the current report, published in the Public Library of Science Medicine.
"This analysis shows that male circumcision could avert nearly six million new infections and save three million lives in sub-Saharan Africa over the next twenty years," they wrote.
Overall, they project that universal male circumcision would reduce the rate of infections by about 37 percent.
"Male circumcision alone cannot bring the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Africa under control. Even circumcised men can become infected, though their risk of doing so is much lower," the journal cautioned in a commentary.
Fri Jul 14, 1:26 PM
TORONTO (Reuters) - ConjuChem Biotechnologies Inc.'s shares lost half of their value on Friday, before recovering slightly, after the company said it had halted clinical tests of its AIDS treatment following the death of a patient.
The Montreal-based company also said it will stop further doses in its Phase 2 trial of the HIV lipodystrophy treatment.
ConjuChem said the cause of the death, which happened in Argentina, and any relationship between the study drug and the death, is under investigation.
"At this point, only once I have further information, will we be able to give a really fair indication of if this was drug-related in any way or not," Lennie Ryer, vice-president of finance at ConjuChem told Reuters.
"I am confident that it is not technology-related, but we will need complete information to ascertain that with certainty."
Ryer said the company hopes to receive a comprehensive report on the patient within the next few days. But he said the patient, like others involved in the trial, was an AIDS patient who was "at risk of a number of medical events."
The company's shares were down 73 Canadian cents, or 36.9 percent, at C$1.25 on Friday on the Toronto Stock Exchange after dropping as low as C$1.00 earlier in the session. Volume was 964,864 shares.
Despite the steep sell-off, both Ryer and analysts termed the downdraft a "knee-jerk reaction" to a shocking headline given that the company's valuation is almost entirely based on its Type 2 diabetic treatment and not on the AIDS treatment.
"We value ConjuChem a little bit differently. We don't give any value to this program. We look at ConjuChem as a long option in the Type 2 diabetes market," said Brian Bapty, an analyst at Raymond James Ltd. in Vancouver, British Columbia.
"This sell-off, although somewhat of a shocking headline, doesn't materially affect our valuation. I suspect, given it's a fairly glitzy headline, it will live in the news for a few more days and the stock has got no upside in the next week. But after the fact, that given some progress with the Type 2 diabetes program, it has produced an (buying) opportunity here."