Hiv Infection

The federal government has approved for the first time a drug that can prevent an HIV infection, a significant development for Baltimore where transmission rates for the virus remain high and growing. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved Truvada in 2004 to treat HIV, but on Monday said it can also be used to increase the odds of stopping the disease from taking hold in high-risk people such as gay men, IV drug users and sex workers "Today's approval marks an important milestone in our fight against HIV," said Dr. Margaret A. Hamburg, FDA commissioner, in a statement.

In 2009, Congress passed legislation reversing the decades-old ban on the use of federal funding for syringe exchange but, for unclear reasons, in late 2011, it reversed this decision, again withholding federal funding from programs that provide drug users with sterile needles and syringes. This month, Congress approved the health spending budget for the rest of this fiscal year without lifting the ban. This lack of action worsens public health problems, makes our communities less safe, and increases future financial burdens on taxpayers.

Baltimore continues to lead major American cities in the percentage of gay men infected with HIV, according to a recently released report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. About 38 percent of men who have sex with men in Baltimore were infected — twice the overall percentage in the 21 cities studied by the CDC in 2008. More troubling, researchers said, was the number of those who were unaware of their infection. That was nearly three-quarters in Baltimore and rising, compared with about 44 percent nationwide.

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.

The party for some 400 of Baltimore's gay and transgender community of color, held at a downtown hotel, included fishnet stockings and stilettos, music and dancing — as well as bowls of condoms and free HIV testing. Inside the Sheraton Inner Harbor hotel, workers from the city and local universities were stationed at tables, armed with pamphlets about dental services, food stamps and housing, plus free goodies such as water bottles. Before guests could enter the main hall, workers approached them, promoting the benefits of HIV testing.

A group of Baltimore's health care leaders has crafted a plan to cut new cases of HIV infection by 25 percent by 2015, as part of an overall strategy to cope with a disease that has plagued the city for decades. The plan, scheduled to be given to Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake Tuesday, calls for attacking HIV/AIDS — which affects more than 13,000 city residents — at its earliest stages by limiting the transmission of the disease and pushing for more widespread testing. The goal is to cut the annual number of new diagnoses from 505 to 379 by 2015.

ATLANTA - The casual homophobia that has long pervaded black America is more than a social failing. This bit of knee-jerk bigotry that keeps black gays in the closet is also a killer. From the black church to the barbershop, a gay-bashing ethos is so prevalent that black men who have sex with other men refuse to admit that they're gay. Indeed, according to Dr. Helene Gayle, one of the nation's top black AIDS researchers, some black parents prefer to falsely accuse their HIV-infected sons of drug abuse rather than admit that the son is gay. Just last week, a black Atlanta radio talk-show host, Coz Carson, was on the air denouncing the push for gay marriage, claiming that support for same-sex unions promotes the increase in HIV among black men - as if homosexuality, not HIV, were contagious.

MBABANE, Swaziland -- Slipping into a green hospital gown in the waiting room, Sipo Mnisi acknowledged he was "a bit nervous." But the 31-year-old businessman, who had been waiting months for an appointment, said he was nonetheless eager to take part in the hottest medical trend in Swaziland: male circumcision. New studies suggest that circumcised men are 60 percent to 75 percent less likely to contract the virus that causes AIDS through sexual contact. In Swaziland, a deeply traditional nation with the world's highest rate of sexually transmitted HIV infection and one of the lowest rates of circumcision, that is prompting a medical revolution.

Over a three-year period, Maryland has registered HIV-infection levels for childbearing women that are among the highest in the United States, says the state health department's AIDS Administration.Only three other states -- New York, New Jersey and Florida -- and the District of Columbia, have HIV-infection rates for childbearing women that exceed Maryland's.While the dramatic rise in rates seen between 1988 and 1989 was not repeated in 1990, the number of childbearing women infected with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)

For the first time in the history of the AIDS epidemic, the number of babies born nationwide with the virus that causes AIDS has leveled off, government researchers say.After increasing sharply in the 1980s, the percentage of childbearing women infected with the human immunodeficiency virus, or HIV, has remained relatively constant since 1989, the researchers found.The reason is unknown, but in a paper being published today in the Journal of the American Medical Association, Dr. Susan F. Davis and her colleagues at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta suggest several possibilities.

The federal government has approved for the first time a drug that can prevent an HIV infection, a significant development for Baltimore where transmission rates for the virus remain high and growing. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved Truvada in 2004 to treat HIV, but on Monday said it can also be used to increase the odds of stopping the disease from taking hold in high-risk people such as gay men, IV drug users and sex workers "Today's approval marks an important milestone in our fight against HIV," said Dr. Margaret A. Hamburg, FDA commissioner, in a statement.

A female condom program was highly effective in preventing HIV infections, according to a new economic analysis by researchers in the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health . The analysis, published in the journal AIDS and Behavior , found the DC Females Condom program, a public-private partnership to provide and promote a type of female condom, prevent enough infections in one year to save more than $8 million in future medical care...

I have to disagree as both a physician and father with Dr. Margaret Moon's opinion lambasting the ruling by Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius that prohibits young teens from acquiring the Plan B pill without a prescription. From a physician's point of view, the article intersperses all kinds of consequences from unprotected sexual activity, including HIV infection, with the discussion on Plan B. Plan B does absolutely nothing for the dangers of unprotected sex, and, in fact, I would worry that taking away the fear of pregnancy from young teens may actually encourage more sexual activity - some of which will be unprotected - and potentially increases the incidence of sexually transmitted infections.

A group of Baltimore's health care leaders has crafted a plan to cut new cases of HIV infection by 25 percent by 2015, as part of an overall strategy to cope with a disease that has plagued the city for decades. The plan, scheduled to be given to Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake Tuesday, calls for attacking HIV/AIDS — which affects more than 13,000 city residents — at its earliest stages by limiting the transmission of the disease and pushing for more widespread testing. The goal is to cut the annual number of new diagnoses from 505 to 379 by 2015.

The party for some 400 of Baltimore's gay and transgender community of color, held at a downtown hotel, included fishnet stockings and stilettos, music and dancing — as well as bowls of condoms and free HIV testing. Inside the Sheraton Inner Harbor hotel, workers from the city and local universities were stationed at tables, armed with pamphlets about dental services, food stamps and housing, plus free goodies such as water bottles. Before guests could enter the main hall, workers approached them, promoting the benefits of HIV testing.

The nation has a huge need for kidneys, livers and other organs for transplant, but federal law has one absolute rule for donors: no HIV infections. Some Johns Hopkins doctors now argue that HIV should not disqualify the organs from transplant into recipients who also are already infected with the virus. "If this legal ban were lifted, we could potentially provide organ transplants to every single HIV-infected transplant candidate on the waiting list," says Dr. Dorry L. Segev, an associate professor of surgery at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine whose recent study concluded that there are 500 potential donors disqualified every year.

MOSCOW -- Fueled by a convergence of surging drug abuse and increased sexual activity, Russia stands on the precipice of an AIDS epidemic every bit as explosive as the one that swept through Europe and the United States 15 years ago.The nation's leading AIDS experts, fully aware after the fall of communism that an open society would bring a rising risk of all sexually transmitted diseases, have long forecast that the number of reported AIDS cases would climb.Although...

Not long ago, the thought of transplanting a kidney into salesman Derek Kee, a heart into statistician Robert Zackin or a liver into playwright Larry Kramer would have defied all reason. All suffered from HIV infection before their organs went bad, and under the old rules, the drugs needed to protect their transplants would surely have crippled their immune systems even more. Giving scarce organs to patients who didn't have long to live was considered wasteful, even unethical. Like so many things about AIDS, that view is slowly giving way to another, articulated by Dr. Stephen T. Bartlett, a surgeon at the University of Maryland Medical Center who performed Kee's transplant last month.

Sexually transmitted diseases proliferate among men and women who have multiple sexual partners. If the recent measure of HIV infection among Baltimore's gay men was restricted to those who frequent "gay" bars and clubs, then it will overestimate the prevalence of HIV in Baltimore because it will not include those gay men who are not seeking extra partners ("Baltimore leads in HIV infection in gay men," Oct. 2). The prime public health message to the people in any community seeking to reduce STDs, including HIV, is and has ever been, "If you are sexually active, have few and preferably only one sexual partner.