E-mail updates
Follow on Twitter
Subscribe to RSSA clinical trial involving AIDS this year is rightly being called by Science magazine the most important scientific breakthrough of the year.
When the study on the benefits of antiretroviral therapy ran last August in the New England Journal of Medicine, it did not really get the attention it deserved, possibly because news headlines are too often drawn to human failure, evil and the miserable. However, researchers convincingly showed that people who take antiretrovirals -- medicine that weakens the HIV virus -- not only benefit from treatment but are far less likely to sexually infect their non-HIV positive wife or partner.
How much less? Try 95 percent!
Myron Cohen of the University of North Carolina's School of Medicine, and an international team of colleagues, started looking at the impact of medicine on disease transmission back in 2007. They studied more than 1,700 heterosexual couples from nine different countries: Brazil, India, Thailand, the United States, Botswana, Kenya, Malawi, South Africa and Zimbabwe. Each couple included one partner with an HIV infection, one not.
They found that AIDS medicine reduced the amount of virus in an infected person’s body -- not news there. But the meds reduced the amount of virus in the infected person to the point where giving it to others through sexual activity was greatly diminished.
So, at last, after taking a terrible toll on us for decades, we now know how to get the HIV virus on the run. Get anti-retroviral medications to all 7.6 million people who need them, continue aggressive efforts to promote the use of condoms and the avoidance of risky sexual and injection drug behavior, give out clean needles to addicts and we can have our revenge on the virus that causes AIDS.
Art Caplan, Ph.D., is the director for the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania. Follow him on Twitter @ArthurCaplan.
Read more columns by Art Caplan:
Leave a Comment:
Even after knowing this, federal and state government continues to cut back on therapy cost help.
They are more concerned with mandating insurance than doing anything about the actual quality of care.
Um, if you have insurance anti-virals are more accessible.
And the more people that have insurance, the cheaper it is.
Also, they were cutting back on help for therapy long before any mandating of insurance was signed into law...
This is Great News! why aren't we providing funding for this?
Now the big drug makers will buy the rights to the drug, and raise the price so high that the people that need it can't afford them. this is an ongoing treatment not just one time.
Jack Johnson - unfortunately that will probably happen. I recall reading an article about a certain cancer drug whose rights just been purchased by a certain pharmaceutical company. They promptly shot the price per pill up to several thousand dollars. This was a pill that needed to be taken for months, so the profit margin was in the hundreds of thousands of dollars area.
It's fine to make profit, but when it results in people losing their lives or being in massive debt for the rest of their lives because you want to make as much money as possible, then that's just immoral. You shouldn't be in the healthcare market if your primary goal is to make money instead of helping the sick and injured get better. Perhaps it would be a good idea to force insurance companies to take a similar oath as doctors do before they do business...
This isn't news, the Swiss announced it years ago. Our gov. prefers to keep you dumb & scared.
This is science, you idiots. The will of God can't be thwarted! (note: if you haven't guessed, this is sarcasm) The evil are being punished! (do I sound like a tele-evanglist yet?) This is great news. Maybe Bill Gates can fund this one. With the greater demand, new technology might make the drugs cheaper. The will of God was to give humans the intelligence to be able to try to understand what He created and how he chose to do it.
Did you really expect to find a description of DNA and RNA in Genesis?
Who will win out? The rational or the animal nature in mankind? The animal side causes the spread of HIV, while the rational mind tries to find a cure.
And if we found a cure, would we promote extensive treatment instead, due to our animal greed?
I wish the news would cover more stories like this...and that goes for both lib and conservative news. Our medical knowledge is advancing so rapidly that it's a wonder people don't hear more positive things.
Take a look at AIDS, yes it kicked our butts for a while but it has to go down as one of the greatest turnarounds of all time (although not yet complete). Not so long ago AIDS was all over the news..."everyone" was infected and dying of it. Now, while it's still terrible, I think we're turning the fight around (less people infected, those infected living longer).
There is even promising research for cancer therapies that reprogram the white blood cells of the patient that effectively eliminates some forms of leukemia...trials have shown people being virtually cured (yes cured) albeit in very small trials. Supposedly there are trials for brain cancer as well.
I don't know what I'm trying to say with this post except that I'm supremely impressed with our researchers for what they're accomplishing. We might not be going to mars or inventing cold fusion but damn, these medical advances are just as awesome and maybe even more important.
**OK, open door for some lame political comment that calls pharm companies evil and mentions how republicans are evil because they support pharm companies who don't want diseases cured because it's not profitable....GO!!
"I don't know what I'm trying to say with this post except that I'm supremely impressed with our researchers for what they're accomplishing."
extremely well said, even if you didn't know you were trying to say it :)
p.s. you know those dissenters are going to comment, their conspiracy theories never rest even in the face of data and fact.
Interesting article, and great news, although it leaves unanswered one important question: Was the 95% reduction in transmission due solely to the fact that patients took anti-retroviral medicine, or was it influenced (possibly) by the fact that those who took anti-retroviral medicine where also more likely to avoid exposing their partner to bodily fluids?
The 95% reduction was in comparison to the control group, which were also couples with one HIV+ individual but who did not receive anti-virals. Thus, your suggestion that the reduction was due to changes in behavior is unlikely. If anything, the treatment group might be expected to have increased number of exposures (i.e. intercourse), making the 95% reduction all the more impressive.
Modern treatment regimes reduce viral load to undetectable levels and the spread to noninflected people is also lowered. What is there about these two events that is news worthy. This is a normal result.
I wonder if the study took into account the effective use of condoms with the participants? I ask because if these couples were steadfastly using condoms, that may account for the lack of transmission. I can't imagine that a person who is educated enough about their condition to be on the medication, take part in a study, and disclose their positive status to their partner would risk infection by not using a condom. I am not poo-pooing the findings. I think its a major breakthrough if the findings were based on intercourse with no protection, but what are the chances that these couples are playing Russian roullette?
I haven't yet seen the actual study, but that's such an obvious source of bias in the results that I'm certain that the researchers took it into account - especially since it was published in Science magazine, which has one of the most respected review processes of any scientific journal.
Usually in such studies, the researchers will look at all of the possible cases to see what accounts for the differences between them - this is called "analysis of variance" in statistics. In this case, we have (at least) four compartments - use or disuse of antiretroviral drugs and use or disuse of condoms, which gives four possible combinations. You look at each of these situations and see what the transmission rate is in each case (Actually it would be more complicated than that - ideally you'd also look at the compliance rates for how regularly the condom and antiretroviral drug users actually used condoms and took the drugs).
John.Galt:
The findings were also published in the New England Journal of Medicine, which is the most trusted Journal used by Physicians and other healthcare professionals today....
Personally I have a problem with the use of the term "breakthrough" in this case; the results are pretty much what you would expect if an HIV carrier's viral load was greatly reduced. Don't get me wrong, it's a significant confirmation of what intuitively seems like the most likely scenario, and it may well lead to significant advances in public health response to HIV, but "breakthrough"? I'd prefer to use that word for studies that lead to surprising and even paradigm-shifting results and not cheapen it in that way.
Of course I realize that MSNBC, like all news outlets, is in the business of sensationalizing news stories in order to promote readership, but I'd like to see just a little bit more journalistic integrity.
I can't argue with the "sensationalizing" thought - The news isn't the news anymore, it is an advertising medium. However, I think most people would be surprised that the viral load would be reduced drastically enough to reduce the risk of transmission by 95%. Assuming that statistic is accurate, then the study both confirmed a common sense hypothesis and demonstrated an exceptional efficacy.
I have no problem with the word "breakthrough" in this case. Because of the astonishing reduction in the rate of transmission of one of the deadliest but preventable diseases, I think the word is justified, even though it isn't a discovery of new technology or a fundamental breakthrough.
I wonder if this will work on other STD's such as Herpes and Human papillomavirus etc.? How many more can we possibly save?
John Galt? what is this 'Atlas Shrugged" nice reference by the way . Bravo!
They really need to find the "mad scientist" and which government is responsible for the virus as well. You can't tell me that this well engineered virus just "happened" along. Just as scientists are now trying to "
grow" strains of the bird flu that can be transmitted thru human contact. How absolutely STUPID can you be to experiment with biological agents that could destroy mankind.