Treatment for HIV Infections

"The incidence of HIV in the United Kingdom is increasing. The majority of new infections are in men of heterosexual age, and a minority of cases are associated with pregnancy or sex work." - Anonymous Online Contributor

"HIV infections often produce symptom patterns similar to those of depression and arthritis. It can interfere with an individual's ability to work or family life.\n" - Anonymous Online Contributor

"Overall, the prevalence of HIV infection in a given population varies significantly by jurisdiction and by geographical area within a jurisdiction. This variation must be considered in designing and implementing public health programs. Because HIV incidence varies widely by jurisdiction, the annual estimate of HIV infections can be misleading. The use of the total estimated incidence reported annually by the CDC for estimating the number of HIV infections must be avoided. Estimates of new HIV infections for the US population should be based upon HIV incidence surveys in each jurisdiction." - Anonymous Online Contributor

"HIV is highly virulent and very resistant to any antibiotic treatment; treatment is primarily aimed at reducing its virulence. Antibiotics do have an effect of course, and patients often have a good quality of life after a course of 3-6 months of antibiotics." - Anonymous Online Contributor

"Treatments for HIV include highly active antiretroviral therapy, abacavir, lamivudine, stavudine, tenofovir, zidovudine, and tenofovir (in combination with abacavir). There is no known cure for HIV or AIDS and treatment is focus on managing symptoms, such as anemia and opportunistic infections. Additional interventions may include blood screening for B-cell lymphoma and counselling for the family." - Anonymous Online Contributor

"There is now consensus that HIV is a single disease entity, which has many variants. It is therefore not surprising that HIV is not transmitted by casual contact, since HIV has been transmitted exclusively through sex and intravenously by health workers or through blood transfusions before or during the AIDS epidemic. Currently, HIV-positive women can diminish the transmission of the virus and may reduce the incidence of acquisition of HIV via casual contact by heterosexual intercourse in the homosexual population. However, the prevention of HIV infection through unprotected heterosexual intercourse alone is not recommended in a cohort of infected individuals in the absence of any HIV-positive women." - Anonymous Online Contributor

"HIV was not found in all cases of genital ulcers. In addition, if one is unsure whether an infection is due to a sexually transmitted disease (STD) such as syphilis, gonorrhea, chlamydia, or HIV, visit the Health Protection Agency (HPA) site. However, some STD tests are available for HIV, such as the rapid HIV test. You can visit [Power(https://wwwnpdcd.org.uk/npdcd.php/get/index.php/home) for further testing] to learn more about HIV tests available in the UK." - Anonymous Online Contributor

"Given comparable or even better results, the use of active control was shown to allow for faster and more reliable conclusions of superiority of active regimens." - Anonymous Online Contributor

"Current therapies for hiv have had limited success. If new treatments can be found, they could greatly improve the lives of those infected with hiv." - Anonymous Online Contributor

"The treatment of HIV-infected patients is currently fraught with ethical dilemma. A key issue is determining how to balance the values and interests of groups as well as individuals by deciding what would be the most important. These ethical dilemmas are particularly critical in resource-limited settings where patients are often treated by inexperienced physicians, without expert guidance, and with limited resources to make decisions about healthcare, including provision of life-saving medicines. As a result, there is high mortality, as demonstrated in this study which demonstrates that the treatment of HIV-infected patients with ART does not guarantee long-term survival." - Anonymous Online Contributor

"Recent research advances a number of important developments in combating AIDS: The advent of highly active antiretroviral therapies; a number of antiretroviral agents not currently being used to treat HIV are currently being tested in the treatment armamentarium of HIV/AIDS; and the discovery of a host of anti-HIV factors (anti-HIV proteins) by scientists from the U.S. National Cancer Institute." - Anonymous Online Contributor

"Antifungal treatment in people with HIV infection is associated with a very significant improvement in survival. While the mechanism is unknown, antifungal effects on innate immunity are likely to play a role in increasing survival. Antifungal therapy for these infections may represent an effective way of reducing mortality from HIV infection and advancing the global fight against this disease." - Anonymous Online Contributor