AIDS Treatment News

A newly available online service allows anyone to locate private historical collections at more than 3,000 institutions, mostly in the U.S. A search for "ACT UP" found 61 collections of papers, videos, and other materials.

A U.S. activist campaign, centered in the San Francisco area near Gilead's headquarters, helped get this major price reduction for Brazil's model HIV treatment program.

Thousands of desperately needed doctors and other medical professionals leave poor countries because no one there can pay them, or provide safe and effective working conditions. Many go to English-speaking countries that do not train enough medical professionals themselves--such as the U.S., where a quarter of the doctors are foreign trained.

Medicine has not made full use of online information--and doing so might save thousands of lives. Part I looks at what has been most successful online in other fields, for background on how medical information could be improved.

A vaccine tested at the U.S. NIAID clearly improved the survival of monkeys, a benefit not predicted by T-cell and viral load tests. It was predicted by measurements of memory T cells in the first few months of infection--giving important insights into how HIV disease develops, and how to test HIV vaccines early so that only the best candidates will go into large human trials.

A research study published 25 years after the first report of AIDS found that at least 3,000,000 years of life have been saved in the U.S. by AIDS treatment. The study and accompanying editorial are free online from the Journal of Infections Diseases.

A major new antiretroviral has been approved, for patients resistant to more than one protease inhibitor. There is no information yet on risk/benefit compared to standard treatments for first-line use. Tibotec, which developed the drug and is now part of Johnson & Johnson, showed price restraint and avoided setting a new record high price, which other companies have done.

The U.S. has an apparently growing problem with fake, counterfeit drugs entering the mainstream drug supply, and being fraudulently sold at full price in regular pharmacies and hospitals; some have no active ingredient, or too little, or substitute a cheap drug for an expensive one. The FDA has asked drug manufacturers to develop technology to track all shipments electronically as they move through the distribution chain; currently, RFID (radio frequency identification) is the preferred method for doing so...

Hundreds of thousands if not millions of patients had problems getting their Medicare Part D prescriptions filled in January 2006, and many failures continue. Some states have provided emergency relief as a temporary measure. This article--which applies only to persons eligible for MediCARE--explains some of the major problems and what is being done to relieve them, and suggests online and telephone resources for information, and for reaching people who can answer questions when necessary.

Some basics on informing oneself and helping others, in prison or after release.

The World Trade Organization may make permanent drug-export rules that have failed to help a single patient in the two years they have been in effect.

Many researchers suspect that low genetic barrier to resistance allowed HIV to adapt to this seemingly powerful three-drug combination.

This new class of antiretrovirals is alive and well despite recent problems.

Ten-day trial showed clear reduction of viral load in volunteers.

New data, new trials on "2nd generation" experimental NNRTI much less subject to viral resistance than efavirenz or nevirapine.

Here is practical background on the new drug benefit, for persons on Medicare or eligible for it--including details on who can qualify for the major low-income help in paying the fees.

No abstract text is available yet for this article.

No abstract text is available yet for this article.

We use this well-publicized research finding as a starting point for discussion of different kinds of immune-based therapy.

A new kind of antiretroviral, called a maturation inhibitor, worked well in reducing viral load in a ten-day trial with HIV-positive volunteers.