Clade Gen

‘Radical’ bill seeks to reduce cost of AIDS drugs by awarding prizes instead …

admin — Sat, 19 May 2012 22:13:56 +0000

Treating AIDS costs tens of thousands of dollars per patient annually in the United States, and more and more patients are unable to afford the life-saving drugs, according to figures from the AIDS Drug Assistance Program. The waiting list for the program, which is jointly funded by federal and state governments and provides medicines to low-income patients, now stands at 2,759, up from 361 in 2010.

Academics have been saying for more than a decade that one way to lower drug costs would be to offer pharmaceutical companies a share of a multi-billion-dollar prize pool, instead of the current system of patents that give a company exclusive rights to newly developed drugs.

The notion surfaced in Congress last week at a hearing called by Sen. Bernard Sanders (I- Vt.), who has introduced a bill to establish a prize system for the development of anti-AIDS drugs.

“It simply blew me away — and would blow anyone’s mind away — that one drug, Atripla, costs $25,000 per year” in the United States, Sanders said at the hearing of the subcommittee on primary health and aging.

Generic versions of the same drug cost $200 in Africa and other parts of the developing world.

The huge price gap is a result of a deal struck with brand-name U.S. drugmakers under the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, which provides anti-retroviral drugs to 3.9 million people in developing countries. In 2003, to reach more patients, brand-name drugmakers agreed to let overseas drugmakers sell generic, low-cost versions of their patented AIDS drugs outside the United States.

Under Sanders’s bill, newly developed AIDS drugs could immediately be made by any drug company as a low-cost generic. In lieu of patent protection, the company that invented the drug could win a prize from a pool funded by insurance companies and the federal government at $3 billion per year.

To win, companies would have to show that a drug performed better than older drugs. A panel of experts would evaluate claims.

If enacted, the bill would save private insurers, Medicaid and other government assistance programs money , Sanders said. Acknowledging that the plan would reduce drug company profits, he called it “fairly radical for the U.S. Congress.”

“This is like the nuclear option for the pharma sector,” said James Love, an intellectual property expert who testified in favor of the bill.

While Sanders acknowledged that the legislation isn’t going anywhere anytime soon — he is its sole sponsor — the idea of prizes to speed new medicines to market is gaining momentum.

Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard Law professor Lawrence Lessig testified in favor of the bill, and last month, an advisory committee to the World Health Organization broadly endorsed prizes for drug development. Via other legislation, Congress is poised to ask the U.S. National Academies to study the issue.

Bike trek raises money for AIDS/HIV testing – Mercury

admin — Sat, 19 May 2012 09:44:46 +0000

Click photo to enlargeAbout 150 cyclists are rolling through the Sacramento Valley to raise awareness and funds for HIV/AIDS testing and services. The group showed no signs of slowing as they took a rest at Durham Community Park late Friday morning.

It’s been quite a trek so far, starting in Folsom Thursday, with a ride of 102 miles ending in Gridley. Friday included a ride to Oroville, a rest in Durham, and ended up in Williams.

Today includes another 100 miles through the foothills finishing in Woodland. The ride ends Sunday at the state Capitol in Sacramento for closing ceremonies.

Nights have been spent at fairgrounds and high schools. Each night of the journey includes shared meals and entertainment.

Jake Rowe, chairman of Norcal AIDS Cycle, is riding a tandem bike with his sister, Stacy Shade. They are among several siblings to take part in the event.

Each rider raised $1,500 to participate, and a crew of 75 volunteers helps along the way with food, water, encouragement and setting up camp.

This year the group is on target to raise about $300,000, which will be distributed to 12 groups that provide testing and services related to HIV and AIDS.

In Chico, Caring Choices will be one of the fundraiser recipients.

Funding for HIV education has been withdrawn with recent budget cuts, even though the number of new infections is on the rise, Rowe explained.

The many organizations promote testing and precautions to prevent the spread of the disease.

Promoting the use

of condoms remains a high priority.

Rowe said testing is also very important, among all age groups and sexual orientation. A simple cheek swab test takes 20 minutes and costs about $15. Yet, people are not routinely tested by their doctors, he said.

It’s been 30 years since the discovery of HIV. Today, there are fewer of the horror stories of the early 1990s when people were dying in larger numbers. Now, the medical community is able to treat symptoms, and many people with the HIV virus are living seemingly normal lives, through diet, exercise and medical care.

But that doesn’t mean the virus has gone away.

People in their 20s may be more nonchalant about the risks, believing there are pills that solve problems from exposure. Older people, perhaps back in dating circles after decades, may not realize they should be tested when they begin having sex with someone new.

While the group rallies around the cause of HIV/AIDS awareness, something special also takes place as people working for the same cause take on the physical challenge of the 330-mile ride, participants said.

Training begins many months before the spring event. During the trek, cyclists encourage one another and focus on their individual and group goal.

Jacqui John of Folsom took the challenge this year for the first time. She works for the Center for AIDS Research, Education and Services in Sacramento, and began training in August. She expected the experience to be one of bonding with her peers, but said it’s been far more than she expected.

While riding, she’s had some time to think about people she has lost, and to honor survivors of HIV and AIDS, she explained.

Every nine seconds someone new is diagnosed with HIV, she said, which underscores the need to be tested.

Barbi Olson works for the Shasta/Tehama/Trinity HIV Food Bank, which helps with the special dietary needs for people with HIV and AIDS. While medications have extended people’s lives, these high doses of pills also mean higher risk for other illnesses, requiring special care with diet, she explained.

The services her group provides are even more vital today because funding for support groups has been recently eliminated. Her food bank only narrowly avoided closure with budget cuts in 2008.

She also encouraged any and all people to ask for an HIV test with their annual medical and gynecological exams.

A mobile HIV testing van with Breaking Barriers of Sacramento offered free HIV/AIDS testing along the route.

Staff writer Heather Hacking can be reached at 896-7758 or hhacking@chicoer.com.

SF mayor agrees to cover HIV/AIDS funding gap

admin — Fri, 18 May 2012 21:36:49 +0000

SAN FRANCISCO — San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee says he will use city funds to cover nearly $7 million in federal cuts to AIDS and HIV funding in San Francisco in the upcoming fiscal year.

Lee made the announcement on Thursday. It came after lobbying from some city supervisors and service providers, who said the funding was vital.

Federal officials have also cut $8 million for AIDS and HIV care in San Francisco from the following fiscal year, 2013-14. The San Francisco Chronicle reports (http://bit.ly/JcpCU7) that that cut has not been filled in.

A spokeswoman for Lee, Christine Falvey, says the mayor has asked service providers to come up with alternate funding sources to fill that gap and lobby for more federal money.

SF to replace lost federal AIDS/HIV funds

admin — Fri, 18 May 2012 09:19:53 +0000

Rachel Gordon

San Francisco Chronicle
May 18, 2012 04:00 AM
Copyright San Francisco Chronicle. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Friday, May 18, 2012

Mayor Lee agrees to restore year’s worth of AIDS/HIV funding cut by feds

admin — Thu, 17 May 2012 21:06:50 +0000

Mayor Ed Lee announced at a meeting Thursday morning with AIDS service providers that he will use city money to backfill $6.6 million in federal cuts to AIDS and HIV care in the city for the new fiscal year that starts July 1.

Ed Lee

“Despite serious local budget shortfalls, we remain committed to funding critical care services for people living with HIV/AIDS in San Francisco,” Lee told City Insider. “We have worked collectively to protect these programs and services and we will continue that collaboration to find solutions in future budget years.”

The announcement came the same day the mayor is set to receive an award from the Asian and Pacific Islander Wellness Center for a decision made in January to use $1.8 million in city funds to keep AIDS and HIV funding intact amid the most recent round of federal spending cuts that would have affected services in the current fiscal year.

The mayor has been working to close a $170 million projected budget for the upcoming fiscal year by June 1, the deadline for submitting his two-year balanced budget plan to the Board of Supervisors for consideration.

San Francisco Supervisors Scott Wiener, David Campos and Christina Olague – the LGBT delegation on the Board of Supervisors — joined forces with services providers to lobby the mayor to restore lost federal funding for AIDS and HIV services. The mayor agreed Thursday to restore nearly all the funding for the upcoming year.

Still not resolved is the reduction of $8.1 million in federal funding for HIV and AIDS services that will hit the city in the fiscal year that starts July 1, 2013. City officials are projecting a $340 million shortfall heading into that budget cycle.

The mayor’s spokeswoman, Christine Falvey, said Lee asked the service providers to help come up with alternative funding sources for the 2013-14 fiscal year and to lobby the federal government to free up more money for San Francisco.

“It’s a major relief. It would have been so devastating not to have this money back-filled. I’m grateful that the mayor gets it,” said Wiener, who attended Thursday’s meeting with Lee.

Scott Wiener

Last week, city budget officials pegged the federal cuts at $7.8 million in the next fiscal year and $10 million the year after that, but have since revised the projected impact to $6.6 million and $8.1 million, respectively.

The federal funding comes from two pots: the Ryan White Care Act, which provides health care and social services for uninsured, under-insured and other financially vulnerable people living with AIDS and HIV, and the Centers for Disease Control, which pays for prevention efforts. Combined, the city got $41.8 million from the two programs this current fiscal year.

An estimated 15,523 San Franciscans are living with the virus, according to the most current city health department data.

For HIV/AIDS patients, stress management is a significant factor in successful …

admin — Thu, 17 May 2012 09:01:45 +0000

Living with HIV or AIDS can be an unyielding source of stress that is not easily handled alone. It takes support, activism and a strong determination to not only survive, but thrive with a disease that takes a heavy mental, physical and emotional toll.

In previous installments of this series, we examined how matters of nutrition and spirituality affect the health of those with HIV/AIDS patients. Among patients and their advocates, however, there is also a focus on their internal lives — and how stress management affects their lives and treatment.

Precious Jackson, a treatment adherence advocate, contracted HIV 14 years ago. Around 1996, she began dating a coworker. “I remember when we started dating, asking him had he ever taken a HIV test because I knew that I was negative. He had taken two, he said. One came back positive and the other one came back negative.”

She said a “red flag” went off, but “I wasn’t paying attention to my intuition. I wanted to be in a relationship and he was my type of dude.” And because one was allegedly positive, “I didn’t bother to enforce it before we took it to the next level. I introduced condoms into the relationship and he immediately told me that he doesn’t like using condoms. And because I wanted to be in a relationship with him, we didn’t.”

They were in a relationship for a year-and-a-half, and another incident came up where he attempted to donate blood. He informed Jackson that the blood bank wanted him to return because there was something wrong.

“When he told me that, intuition popped in again and I was like, ‘There is something going on, there is a possibility that he could be HIV-positive. But, I was scared and I didn’t want to know because the only thing I knew then about HIV was that you die. I didn’t want to die.”

Not long after, he was incarcerated and the news was confirmed via letter. She went to get tested, and it came back positive. “I was devastated, of course,” she said. “I thought women such as myself don’t acquire HIV because I am heterosexual, an African-American woman, have never done drugs, never was promiscuous. The only thing I did was get in a relationship and trust this man who I loved to be honest with me.”

At first, she said life was very stressful. She was depressed. And although she did not reduce herself to staying in bed, mentally she battled with having the virus. “I couldn’t believe this was happening to me,” she said.

Things turned around in 2000 when she participated in a support group at Women Alive. By the following year, she was an employee, going from a peer advocate to a treatment advocate to a treatment adherence coordinator.

Yet, the news kept coming. Last year, she found out that her ex had known he was HIV-positive long before they began dating.

“I’ll tell you how good God is. Forgiveness is always good because if I hadn’t forgiven that man it would have been on,” she said. “I was upset. But the work that I am doing now is fulfilling because once I had accepted the virus I made a vow to myself and God that I would tell my story so that another woman, particularly Black women, wouldn’t have to walk in the same shoes I’m walking in. If I can save a life, then my work is not in vein. It’s rewarding to be able to give back.”

Now very active, the treatment adherence coordinator also holds educational workshops where she tells her story to at-risk women, educates them about the virus, addresses risk factors, incorporates self-esteem building components and reminds them to “follow their intuition, because that’s God leading us out of danger.”

Darryl Hendrix, who has been HIV-positive for 22 years, is a seemingly spirited guy with so much vibrancy. His warm smile and outgoing personality draws you in. But it took time, therapy and being involved in social networks.

During his interview with The Wave, Hendrix spoke lightly and briefly about his past, and at one point laughed, saying “you’re trying to get me back to that bad place.”

It was a place he would rather forget. However, five years ago when featured in AIDS Project Los Angeles’ annual report it was a different story. He relived memories that haunted him.

For a year, his family was unaware that he had been diagnosed with HIV after enrolling in a research study at County-USC Medical Center. They were seeking qualified candidates to test an experimental drug aimed at treating high blood pressure.

No more than three weeks in, a nurse pulls him into a room where she informs him that he cannot participate in the study because he was HIV-positive. The news was devastating. At the time, he was a 31-year-old married father of two. He was also gay.

“Even though I kept quiet, my family suspected,” he told APLA. “When I was young, my dad called me a ‘homo.’ It was the worst insult I could think of.” And when his peers would use such words, he unleashed his frustration out on them because, “I couldn’t hit my dad, but I could hit them.”

In an attempt to hide his sexuality, he married at 19 and had children. But throughout, he privately engaged with other men. He said leading the double life was causing his stress to mount and his blood pressure to skyrocket, which led him to apply for the study that eventually led to his status being revealed.

When he finally mustered up the nerve to then unveil the news to his family — his mother’s health was failing and he wanted to come clean — tragedy struck. The next afternoon, his mother passed away.

Hendrix said he believed it was his fault. His body could not stand the compounding stress, and weeks later he attempted suicide twice. When that didn’t work, he turned to cocaine. It wrecked havoc on his body, and he eventually suffered a stroke.

At the behest of a nurse at the hospital where he was taken, Hendrix began seeing a therapist at APLA’s Pacific Center, which is a program composed of licensed marriage and family therapists who offer free weekly psychotherapy sessions.

He was able to get clean, and as a result he was able to obtain subsidized housing. An APLA housing case manager helped him locate a Hollywood apartment.

It was therapy, support groups, accessing resources at APLA and using his voice to tell his story and prevent others from taking his path that have allowed him to keep going on.

Today, Hendrix still has some blindness and his face is slightly drooped as a result of his stroke. But his relationship with his family — including his ex-wife and children — has blossomed. “I’m happy,” he said. “I’m alive.”

LaVera Anom, who has been HIV-positive for a decade, found out she was infected when she went for a pregnancy exam. She was out of the country and had just gotten married to her husband in his native Nigeria. While there, she began experiencing pregnancy complications, which caused her to be admitted into the hospital for several weeks. Once healthy enough to take a flight back to the states, it was no more than 48 hours that her feet were on American soil before she was back in the hospital again. She had placenta previa, where the placenta grows in the lowest part of the uterus and covers all or part of the opening of the cervix.

Since they had been conducting tests, a nurse asked if she would like to take an AIDS test. She consented, and two weeks later she received the call of her life. Anom thought there were complications with her fetus, but when they sent her to the infectious disease clinic she knew something was gravely wrong.

“A lot and nothing,” she said of what went through her mind. “The initial thing was ‘OK, what now?’”

After answering questions, the nurse informed her that she had symptoms of the virus, “but because the symptoms of HIV and some of your routine illnesses are so close I was being treated for a year-and-a-half for different things. No one thought to ask me if I wanted or needed an HIV test because I hadn’t been sexually active in two years. The last partner I had before my husband was the one who infected me.”

She was “shocked,” she said. “I started crying as I sat there because it really hit me.” Thinking back, Anom said she had a fungal infection underneath her breasts that was difficult to get rid of, recurring sinus infections, she began to develop allergies, her eczema flared up, and two big lumps had developed behind both ears.

“No one caught it,” she added, noting that her viral load had more than tripled. “My immune system had been damaging for a while.”

Initially it was closed topic and Anom would not discuss it with anyone, not even her family. “I just took my medicine and took myself to the doctor,” she said. “I still lived my life as though I wasn’t HIV positive even though I was taking medication every day for it. I was living in the house by myself and I still hid my medicine even though no was here but myself and my son.”

Anom shielded herself from the outside world, but in doing so she fell into a huge bout of depression. “I cried every day for the first two years of knowing that I was HIV positive,” she said, noting that her tears began Sept. 10, 2004 and lasted until May 2006.

On a doctor’s appointment, she met a woman with a granddaughter who had been prenatally infected. The woman asked her to join the Los Angeles Family AIDS Network, and Anom ignored the request several times, until 2006. However, “what made me stop crying is that I went to a conference put on by AIDS Alliance for Children, Youth and Families. … I had an opportunity to meet a whole lot of people. The whole two bottom floors were filled with people like me from all over the world. From there, I didn’t cry anymore.”

It still took some easing into. “I still wouldn’t receive services,” she added. That is until APLA got a hold of her. As part of completing her bachelor degree, Anom took an internship with the organization — she didn’t tell them she was HIV positive. She was referring people to food banks and assisting them with housing, both things she so desperately needed. Anom had enough and chose to open up to the staff. Her needs were met, and it was the first step to becoming active.

Since then, Anom has continued to work with APLA, attend AIDS walks and participate in forums around the world. She said she still suffers from depression, takes anti-depressants, sees a therapist and finds it difficult to get out of bed in the mornings and be in social settings. But when she is with people like herself and voicing her story and potentially saving the lives of those at risk, she “feel[s] alive” and regains a spark that often seems lost.

These were stories of tragedy that turned into hope, but still “too many today are living with this disease that are isolated and are alone because they can’t disclose or don’t feel comfortable disclosing to their families,” said Jackson.

This reporting was undertaken as part of The California Endowment Health Journalism Fellowships, a program of USC’s Annenberg School for Communication Journalism.

Area Conference on Disparities in HIV/AIDS Convenes May 23-24 in San Francisco …

admin — Wed, 16 May 2012 20:55:50 +0000

WASHINGTON, May 15, 2012 — /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ – Skyrocketing rates of HIV among African Americans and Latinos in the Bay Area will take center stage when national and local leaders in HIV policy convene in San Francisco on May 23-24 for a conference on the unequal burden of HIV/AIDS among communities of color, sexual minorities and the poor.

Sponsored by the Washington-based Forum for Collaborative HIV Research, the meeting comes at a time when HIV infection among African Americans is seven-fold the rate of whites and nearly three times as high among Latinos as for whites. In fact, in San Francisco alone, it is estimated that as many as a third (33%) of the African American men who have sex with men (MSM) now live with HIV and disparities exist across the spectrum of care – from early diagnosis to access and linkage to care and treatment outcomes. To change this situation, the conference will use the Bay Area as a test case for identifying innovative interdisciplinary approaches that overcome disparities by dealing with the root causes of the problem, including poverty, unequal access to healthcare services, lower educational attainment, social stigma, and sexual minority stress.

“This important conference is designed to solidify the science of HIV disparities and effective interventions that are changing the standard of care by approaching disparities from all sides and using the Bay Area as ‘ground zero’ for what is working and what is not,” said Veronica Miller, Ph.D., Director of the Forum. “Our goal is to take up the current challenges faced by academic centers and community organizations in the Bay Area to generate novel ways to address disparities in HIV at the state and national levels.”

The conference – Overcoming Health Disparities in the Bay Area: Using HIV/AIDS as a Model – will take place at the Mission Bay Conference Center at UCSF Robertson Auditorium. Held in association with the University of California, San Francisco Center for AIDS Research and San Francisco Department of Public Health, the meeting is expected to draw an estimated 150 scientists, clinicians, public health leaders and advocates, including many from the Bay Area.

New White House AIDS Policy Advisor to Give Keynote Address on May 24 Of special importance to the HIV/AIDS community, President Obama’s new Director of the Office of National AIDS Policy, Grant Colfax, MD, returns to the Bay Area to provide an update on the Administration’s National HIV/AIDS Strategy, which calls for accelerated adoption of routine HIV testing and for increasing patients’ access to care. Joining the White House after working for many years in San Francisco as the Director of the HIV Prevention Section in the Department of Public Health, Dr. Colfax will describe the regional implications of implementing the National HIV/AIDS Strategy in terms of reduced HIV transmission rates.

Rhodessa Jones, Cultural Odyssey Troupe to Perform; Address Challenges for Women with HIV Another conference highlight will be a performance by artist, singer and writer Rhodessa Jones and The Medea Project: Theater for Incarcerated Women addressing trauma, abuse, and HIV infection in women. Developed in conjunction with the Women’s HIV Program (WHP) at University of California, San Francisco, this very innovative and effective intervention for HIV-positive women entails a year-long workshop where women write out their personal stories and make known their HIV status in a public theatrical performance called Dancing with the Clown of Love.

Government leaders; HIV/AIDS Experts to Speak at the Conference Because disparities occur at all points along the HIV care continuum – from routine testing and linkage to care to antiretroviral prescribing – top government and HIV experts will also present the latest thinking on the causes of disparities in HIV and highlight innovative ways these barriers are being addressed in the Bay Area. Highlights include:

Wednesday, May 23

Dr. Paul Volberding, the new Director of the AIDS Research Institute (ARI) at UCSF, will provide a unique perspective on the HIV epidemic, comparing and contrasting the response to HIV in San Francisco and in Uganda where there are more commonalities that may be realized
Dr. Warner C. Greene, Director and Senior Investigator, Gladstone Institute of Virology and Immunology at UCSF, will highlight the role of basic science in addressing the biological components of health disparities in HIV/AIDS
Dr. Marguerita Lightfoot, Co-Director of the Center for AIDS Prevention Studies (CAPS) at UCSF, will emphasize the role of community based organizations and the importance of integrating socio-cultural components into effective interventions
Dr. Cynthia A. Gomez, founding Director of San Francisco State University’s Health Equity Institute, will focus on the role of local policies that influence health disparities and ways to mitigate their effect
Valorie Eckert, Research Scientist for the Office of AIDS, California Department of Public Health (CDPH), will provide an updated epidemiological overview HIV/AIDS in the Bay Area counties with emphasis on the diverse drivers of the epidemic
Rhodessa Jones and the Cultural Odyssey Troupe will use theatrical performance to show how disclosing abuse empowers women with HIV to stay in treatment
Dr. Joan Y. Reede, Dean for Diversity and Community Partnership, Harvard Medical School, will address the importance of diversity in the healthcare workforce in overcoming disparities in HIV

Thursday, May 24

Dr. Grant Colfax, Director of the White House Office of National AIDS Policy, will give the keynote address on the federal government’s priorities in implementing the National HIV/AIDS Strategy
Greg Millett, CDC/HHS Liaison to White House Office of National AIDS Policy, will summarize new research findings that help explain disparities in HIV infection among black and white men who have sex with men
Anne Donnelly, Director of Public Policy for Project Inform, one of the most influential community based HIV treatment information and advocacy organizations, will focus on healthcare reform and the implications for Bay Area HIV prevention and treatment programs

About the Forum for Collaborative HIV Research Part of the University of California (UC), Berkeley School of Public Health and based in Washington, DC, the Forum was founded in 1997 as the outgrowth of a White House initiative. Representing government, industry, patient advocates, healthcare providers, foundations and academia, the Forum is a public/private partnership that organizes roundtables and issues reports on a range of global HIV/AIDS issues. Forum recommendations have changed the ways that clinical trials are conducted, accelerated the delivery of new classes of drugs, heightened awareness of TB/HIV co-infection, and helped to spur national momentum toward universal testing for HIV. http://www.hivforum.org.

SOURCE Forum for Collaborative HIV Research

First at-Home HIV Test Nears Approval

admin — Wed, 16 May 2012 08:48:53 +0000

First at-Home HIV Test Nears Approval

May 15, 2012 — The FDA should approve the first HIV test for at-home use and over-the-counter sale, the agency’s advisory committee said today in a unanimous 17-0 vote.

The test is OraQuick from OraSure. It’s a home version of a rapid HIV test already being used by health care professionals in community settings.

The committee’s opinion was summed up by panel member Steven W. Pipe, MD, of the University of Michigan.

“I can’t get past the quarter of a million people in the U.S. who have HIV and are not tested,” Pipe said at the meeting. “If we make any dent in that, the answer is yes, we realize the [OraQuick At-Home] benefit outweighs its risks.”

The price tag of the at-home test has not yet been set but will be a good bit more than the $20 cost of the professional version. That’s partly because it will come with a detailed instruction booklet, and because OraSure will set up a call center with trained counselors available 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

“The price will be substantially lower than $60,” Stephen R. Lee, PhD, OraSure executive vice president and chief science officer, told the committee.

Now anybody concerned about whether they have the AIDS virus — and who can afford OraQuick — may be able to take the test at home. But there’s a catch.

In clinical trials enrolling regular people at risk of HIV infection, some 7% of people with HIV infection are wrongly told they don’t have HIV. With a professional test, that happens only 2% of the time.

According to FDA calculations, this means that in the first year after approval, the test will wrongly tell about 3,800 people with HIV infection that they are not infected.

The FDA calculates that in the first year after OraQuick is approved for home use, an extra 45,000 people will correctly learn they have HIV.

That’s a big deal. The CDC estimates that there are 50,000 new HIV infections every year. About 1.2 million Americans are HIV-infected, and about 1 out of 5 don’t know they carry the AIDS virus. Such people may be more likely to spread the virus than those who know they are infected.

Panel member Susan Buchbinder, MD, director of HIV research at San Francisco’s health department and a long-time AIDS researcher, noted that while some people may get inaccurate results, the test likely will alter people’s HIV risk behavior.

“A positive HIV test does reduce risk behavior. A negative test doesn’t have much of an influence,” Buchbinder said. “We must assume there will be some incorrect results. The question is how do we help people understand a negative result might not truly mean a person is negative for HIV.”

AIDS Retrospective: A Pictorial Timeline of the HIV/AIDS Pandemic

Area Conference on Disparities in HIV/AIDS Convenes May 23-24 in San Francisco …

admin — Tue, 15 May 2012 20:48:04 +0000

WASHINGTON, May 15, 2012 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ –
Skyrocketing rates of HIV among African Americans and Latinos in the Bay Area will take center stage when national and local leaders in HIV policy convene in San Francisco on May 23-24 for a conference on the unequal burden of HIV/AIDS among communities of color, sexual minorities and the poor.

The conference – Overcoming Health Disparities in the Bay Area: Using HIV/AIDS as a Model – will take place at the Mission Bay Conference Center at UCSF Robertson Auditorium. Held in association with the University of California, San Francisco Center for AIDS Research and San Francisco Department of Public Health, the meeting is expected to draw an estimated 150 scientists, clinicians, public health leaders and advocates, including many from the Bay Area.

New White House AIDS Policy Advisor to Give Keynote Address on May 24Of special importance to the HIV/AIDS community, President Obama’s new Director of the Office of National AIDS Policy, Grant Colfax, MD, returns to the Bay Area to provide an update on the Administration’s National HIV/AIDS Strategy, which calls for accelerated adoption of routine HIV testing and for increasing patients’ access to care. Joining the White House after working for many years in San Francisco as the Director of the HIV Prevention Section in the Department of Public Health, Dr. Colfax will describe the regional implications of implementing the National HIV/AIDS Strategy in terms of reduced HIV transmission rates.

Rhodessa Jones, Cultural Odyssey Troupe to Perform; Address Challenges for Women with HIVAnother conference highlight will be a performance by artist, singer and writer Rhodessa Jones and The Medea Project: Theater for Incarcerated Women addressing trauma, abuse, and HIV infection in women. Developed in conjunction with the Women’s HIV Program (WHP) at University of California, San Francisco, this very innovative and effective intervention for HIV-positive women entails a year-long workshop where women write out their personal stories and make known their HIV status in a public theatrical performance called Dancing with the Clown of Love.

Government leaders; HIV/AIDS Experts to Speak at the ConferenceBecause disparities occur at all points along the HIV care continuum – from routine testing and linkage to care to antiretroviral prescribing – top government and HIV experts will also present the latest thinking on the causes of disparities in HIV and highlight innovative ways these barriers are being addressed in the Bay Area. Highlights include:

Wednesday, May 23

Dr. Paul Volberding, the new Director of the AIDS Research Institute (ARI) at UCSF, will provide a unique perspective on the HIV epidemic, comparing and contrasting the response to HIV in San Francisco and in Uganda where there are more commonalities that may be realized

Dr. Warner C. Greene, Director and Senior Investigator, Gladstone Institute of Virology and Immunology at UCSF, will highlight the role of basic science in addressing the biological components of health disparities in HIV/AIDS

Dr. Marguerita Lightfoot, Co-Director of the Center for AIDS Prevention Studies (CAPS) at UCSF, will emphasize the role of community based organizations and the importance of integrating socio-cultural components into effective interventions

Dr. Cynthia A. Gomez, founding Director of San Francisco State University’s Health Equity Institute, will focus on the role of local policies that influence health disparities and ways to mitigate their effect

Valorie Eckert, Research Scientist for the Office of AIDS, California Department of Public Health (CDPH), will provide an updated epidemiological overview HIV/AIDS in the Bay Area counties with emphasis on the diverse drivers of the epidemic

Rhodessa Jones and the Cultural Odyssey Troupe will use theatrical performance to show how disclosing abuse empowers women with HIV to stay in treatment

Dr. Joan Y. Reede, Dean for Diversity and Community Partnership, Harvard Medical School, will address the importance of diversity in the healthcare workforce in overcoming disparities in HIV

Thursday, May 24

Dr. Grant Colfax, Director of the White House Office of National AIDS Policy, will give the keynote address on the federal government’s priorities in implementing the National HIV/AIDS Strategy

Greg Millett, CDC/HHS Liaison to White House Office of National AIDS Policy, will summarize new research findings that help explain disparities in HIV infection among black and white men who have sex with men

Anne Donnelly, Director of Public Policy for Project Inform, one of the most influential community based HIV treatment information and advocacy organizations, will focus on healthcare reform and the implications for Bay Area HIV prevention and treatment programs

About the Forum for Collaborative HIV ResearchPart of the University of California (UC), Berkeley School of Public Health and based in Washington, DC, the Forum was founded in 1997 as the outgrowth of a White House initiative. Representing government, industry, patient advocates, healthcare providers, foundations and academia, the Forum is a public/private partnership that organizes roundtables and issues reports on a range of global HIV/AIDS issues. Forum recommendations have changed the ways that clinical trials are conducted, accelerated the delivery of new classes of drugs, heightened awareness of TB/HIV co-infection, and helped to spur national momentum toward universal testing for HIV.
http://www.hivforum.org .

SOURCE Forum for Collaborative HIV Research

HIV/AIDS patients at higher risk of cardiac death: study

admin — Tue, 15 May 2012 08:17:35 +0000

(AFP)
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10 hours ago

WASHINGTON — People suffering from HIV/AIDS are at much higher risk than the general population of sudden cardiac death, researchers in California have found.

In a paper published Monday in the “Journal of the American College of Cardiology,” two professors at the University of California-San Francisco show incidents of “sudden cardiac death” to be four times higher for HIV/AIDS patients, a result the researchers found surprising, according to a university press release.

“The fact that the vast majority of cardiac deaths were sudden is surprising and implies that we as clinicians need to be aware of this potential health issue among patients with HIV,” said Priscilla Hsue, an associate professor at UCSF who was one of the study’s lead researchers.

Hsue and her fellow researcher, Zian Tseng, an electrophysiologist, began their study in 2010 after Tseng noticed an alarming trend in separate research analyzing sudden deaths in San Francisco.

“I noticed that many of these cases involved individuals with HIV infection who were dying suddenly,” Tseng said in the press release. “I wondered if there was some sort of connection there.”

Hsue and Tseng’s research focused on 2,860 HIV patients, whose deaths over 10 years were meticulously recorded by San Francisco General Hospital’s Ward 86. Ward 86 was the first clinic specializing in HIV/AIDS to comprehensively characterize all deaths, according to the press release.

The study showed that from 2000 to 2009, 15 percent of patients died of cardiac-related illnesses. Of that group, 86 percent died of sudden cardiac death, four times the rate of San Francisco’s general population. The study controlled for age, race and other demographic factors.

The study’s findings may be particularly important at a time when improved drug treatments have allowed more HIV/AIDS infected people to live longer.

“Now that HIV-infected individuals are living longer with the benefit of antiretroviral therapy, non-AIDS conditions are becoming increasingly important and at the top of this list is cardiovascular disease,” Hsue said.