Hiv

A drug commonly used by patients with HIV may be damaging nerve cells and causing memory loss, Johns Hopkins researchers have found. Doctors have long thought the brain damage and memory loss longterm survivors of HIV suffer was caused by the disease. Johns Hopkins scientists now believe a large cause is the anti-retroviral drug efavirenz, which attacks and damages brain cells. Efavirenz is one of the drugs patients with HIV use to suppress the disease. The researchers believe a minor change in the drug's structure may be able to block its toxic effects and still allow it to suppress the virus.  Norman J. Haughey, Ph.D., lead researcher and an associate professor of neurology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine , said in a release that the research is further evidence of the health problems drugs to treat HIV can cause.

Dr. Ruth H. Singer, a retired physician who was a state health administrator and later worked in AIDS and HIV treatment at Chase Brexton Health Services, died of pancreatic cancer May 27 at her North Baltimore home. She was 69. "What one loved about Ruth is that she never held back," said Dr. Alfred "Al" Sommer, dean emeritus of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. "If something was too soft and dreamy, she insisted on facing the practical nature of the course of action and hoped for an outcome.

When Malcolm Coley was diagnosed with HIV, he began preparing to die. The Baltimore man, a former heroin user who suspects he contracted the virus by sharing needles, packed his bags and moved to Washington to live his last days closer to family. "I figured the end was near," he says. That was 1988. More than two decades later, Coley, 54, is, in his words, "still hanging around. " He traded drugs long ago for a healthful diet, owns his own home, works for a Baltimore nonprofit and volunteers as an AIDS educator, talking to students and adults about living with HIV. As advances in treatment have turned what was once a virtual death sentence into a livable condition, the HIV/AIDS population is aging.

Doctors and patients alike are often uncomfortable talking about sexual health and sexually transmitted disease. But a new Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report shows that this squeamishness costs society millions of dollars spent trying to treat or cure diseases that could have been prevented, vaccinated against, screened for or detected at an earlier stage of development. According to the CDC, about 19 million Americans each year are affected by sexually transmitted diseases and infections.

I was amazed and appalled that nowhere in your article on the rise in HIV infection among African-American women do you mention the need to use condoms to prevent the spread of the disease ("Black women in city infected with HIV at higher rate than national average," March 8). The idea that women should ensure their partners have been tested is good, but between the time of the test and intercourse, the individual could have been exposed. The idea of being "particular" about the type of man you date is nice but not safe.

HIV Plus is a new consumer's guide to HIV treatment and research. Produced by Out Publishing, HIV Plus is different from other magazines on the subject, says Out president Henry E. Scott."

Some leading AIDS experts have issued the first guidelines aimed exclusively at getting those newly diagnosed with HIV into treatment and keeping them in it. Thirty one international experts, including three Johns Hopkins faculty members, used 325 studies involving tens of thousands of people infected with HIV to develop the guidelines for the International Association of Physician in AIDS Care .  HIV, which infects about 50,000...

When the Rev. Keron Sadler of the NAACP tried to persuade churches around the country to play a more active role in HIV/AIDS education, she drew some hostile reactions. One pastor said his congregants might think he was gay. Another said AIDS is a curse. Yet another walked out of the room rather than discuss the topic. Those reactions highlight the challenges facing Baltimore as it enlists church outreach for its ambitious goal of curbing new HIV/AIDS cases by 25 percent in the next four years.

Et cetera Report: Another lawsuit alleges Alomar has HIV Roberto Alomar 's wife has accused the former baseball star in divorce papers of having unprotected sex with her despite knowing that he is HIV-positive. The New York Post reported Thursday that Maria Del Pilar Rivera Alomar filed paperwork in Florida alleging the former Orioles second baseman "knew prior to his first sexual contact with [her] that he was HIV-positive. " The lawsuit is the second in two years to accuse Alomar of having unprotected sex while knowing he carried the virus.

Mexican HIV center getting Md. help Maryland's Institute of Human Virology has agreed to help a Mexican university create an institute for the study and treatment of HIV/AIDS. The new center will be a division of the Universidad Autonoma of Nuevo Leon in Monterrey, Mexico. Part of a larger medical science building to be completed in 2006, it will carry the name IHV Mexico but will be independent of the Baltimore facility. Officials with the Mexican university signed a memorandum of understanding in Monterrey yesterday with Dr. Robert Gallo, director of the IHV, and Dr. Jennie Hunter-Cevera, president of the University of Maryland Biotechnology Institute.

A Mississippi infant born with HIV has become the first child cured of the deadly virus, leaving hope that the disease can be eliminated in the youngest patients, scientists from Johns Hopkins Children's Center and other institutions said Sunday. The infant, who was born to an HIV-infected mother, was given antiretroviral treatment beginning 30 hours after birth. Scientists believe the early intervention may have proven key to curing the child, who is now 2 1/2 years old. The infant has been determined “functionally cured,” said the scientists, some of whom are from the University of Mississippi Medical Center and the University of Massachusetts Medical School.

An Edgemere man pleaded guilty Wednesday to having sexual contact with a teenage boy, in a plea deal that allowed him to avoid trial on a rarely used charge of exposing a victim to the HIV virus. Steven Douglas Podles, 36, was charged after police said he engaged in sexual activity with a 13-year-old outside the teen's home in February 2012. Podles had been treated for HIV, prosecutors said, but the boy did not contract the disease. The two met on Grindr, an adult dating app that requires users to be 18 or older.

As we prepare to mark World AIDS Day tomorrow, the U.S. government this week announced a blueprint for achieving an AIDS-free generation. The plan to confront AIDS globally outlines goals and objectives that take into account groundbreaking scientific advances in HIV care, treatment, and prevention - many of which would not have been possible without federally funded research supported by Maryland-based institutions and scientists. These advances in our knowledge of how to treat and prevent HIV infection could be game-changing in our fight against the pandemic, but time to act on this new U.S. blueprint will be short.

A drug commonly used by patients with HIV may be damaging nerve cells and causing memory loss, Johns Hopkins researchers have found. Doctors have long thought the brain damage and memory loss longterm survivors of HIV suffer was caused by the disease. Johns Hopkins scientists now believe a large cause is the anti-retroviral drug efavirenz, which attacks and damages brain cells. Efavirenz is one of the drugs patients with HIV use to suppress the disease. The researchers believe a minor change in the drug's structure may be able to block its toxic effects and still allow it to suppress the virus.  Norman J. Haughey, Ph.D., lead researcher and an associate professor of neurology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine , said in a release that the research is further evidence of the health problems drugs to treat HIV can cause.

When police accused an Edgemere man of having sex with a 13-year-old boy, most of the charges were straightforward: soliciting a minor and a related sexual offense, which together could carry up to 30 years in prison. But Baltimore County prosecutors also accused Steven Douglas Podles of knowingly attempting to transmit the HIV virus to the boy - a seldom-used, and often controversial, charge that carries an additional three years behind bars. Even as prosecutors prepare their case against Podles, the effectiveness of such laws is being debated by legislators and public health officials from Maryland to California.

Fewer Americans than previously thought are controlling their HIV infections and potentially putting the public at higher risk, according to a new study from Johns Hopkins University and University of Pennsylvania. The researchers found that there are tens of thousands of people - particularly young adults, blacks, injection drug users and the uninsured - that are not consistently suppressing their viral loads. Mostly, they are not adhering to their drug regimens. And when patients go on and off their medications, they can become resistant to therapy and put other people in greater danger of contracting the virus that causes AIDS.

By the time someone tests positive for HIV at a Baltimore health clinic today, he or she may well have passed on the deadly AIDS virus any number of times. More people in Baltimore are now living with HIV or the disease caused by it than a decade ago. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ranked the city fifth in new cases of AIDS, according to 2003 statistics, the most recent available. To stem that steady incline, city public health officials are pursuing a new way to identify the latest infections.

Allowing testimony about a Carroll County man's HIV-positive status during his child sex abuse trial could prejudice jurors against him, defense attorneys argued during a motions hearing yesterday in Circuit Court.In addition, lengthy medical testimony about the human immunodeficiency virus and how it causes AIDS could detract from telling what happened to a 3-year-old county boy, county public defender Barbara Kreinar told Judge Raymond E. Beck Sr. yesterday."If we leave that in, it is not a trial focusing on [the boy's]

Its incredible that with all of the articles on HIV and AIDS, the fact that the FDA has finally approved of a 15-minute over-the-counter test for HIV has barely been mentioned ("Rapid at-home HIV test gains federal approval," July 4). You talk about unprotected sex, you talk about abstinence, you talk about condoms, etc., but here we have a method to "privately and immediately " determine whether your partner is HIV positive. One would think this would be a strong deterrent for unprotected sex, but it seems like it's a taboo subject.

Sexual promiscuity fueled by alcohol and drug use led one 47-year-old Towson man to contract HIV. But when he heard about government approval of the drug Truvada to lower people's risk of getting the disease, he wasn't completely sold on it as a lifesaver. The man, who didn't want to be identified because he hasn't told some family members he is HIV-positive, worries that such a pill could end up encouraging risk-taking. "If you're going to make something readily available to people that already engage in high-risk behavior, are you not saying then that we condone this high-risk behavior, which will then add fuel to the fire?"