{"id":9663,"date":"2011-07-17T03:07:27","date_gmt":"2011-07-17T03:07:27","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2011-07-17T03:07:27","modified_gmt":"2011-07-17T03:07:27","slug":"Medical-breakthrough-found-in-AIDS-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/?p=9663","title":{"rendered":"Medical breakthrough found in AIDS war"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Asian Americans have lower AIDS rates than their white counterparts and they are less likely to die of HIV\/AIDS. <\/li>\n<li>Asian Americans are less likely to have been tested for HIV\/AIDS. <\/li>\n<li>The total number of reported AIDS cases has generally declined over the past five years for the White population, however it has continued to increase for Asian Americans.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The biggest medical forum on AIDS kicks off on Sunday to a buzz of excitement about potential strategies for curbing a pandemic that has now claimed 30 million lives in its three-decade history.<\/p>\n<p>A four-day conference in Rome will mull dramatic evidence that drugs designed to treat patients with HIV can be used to shield uninfected people from the AIDS virus.<\/p>\n<p><strong>This could be the best news in 15 years, when antiretroviral drugs started to transform the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) from a death sentence to a manageable disease.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>It opens up dazzling options for rolling back a pandemic for which there is still no cure or vaccine, say some experts.<\/p>\n<p>The conference will gather thousands of specialists, ranging from virologists to pharmacologists and disease trackers.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Here are the main causes for all the excitement:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>&#8212; a trial conducted among &#8220;sero-discordant&#8221; heterosexual couples in Africa, meaning couples in which one partner had been tested positive HIV while the other was uninfected.<\/p>\n<p>The risk of HIV infection fell by a whopping 96 percent when the infected partner started early use of daily antiretrovirals.<\/p>\n<p>&#8212; a trial conducted among sero-discordant heterosexual couples in Kenya and Uganda which took a quite different tack. It asked the uninfected partner to take the daily anti-HIV pill.<\/p>\n<p>The risk of infection fell 62 to 73 percent compared with couples where the uninfected partner took a placebo.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;This is a major scientific breakthrough which reconfirms the essential role that antiretroviral medicine has to play in the AIDS response,&#8221; Michel Sidibe, executive director of UNAIDS, said on Wednesday.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;These studies could help us to reach the tipping point in the HIV epidemic.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>In 2009, more than 33 million people were living with HIV and 2.6 million people became newly infected, according to UNAIDS.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;If you start early treatment for people infected with HIV, you get a 96.3-percent decrease in transmission,&#8221; Julio Montaner, director of the BC Centre for Excellence in HIV\/AIDS in British Columbia, Canada, said in a phone interview.<\/p>\n<p>Will the results from a trial &#8211; where volunteers are enthusiastic and encouraged by their partner to follow their pill regimen &#8211; be equally valid when extended to the messiness of real life?<\/p>\n<p>And what about the risk that people become over-confident and forgo use of a condom?<\/p>\n<p>Giving HIV pills to uninfected, as opposed to infected, people raises even more issues. <\/p>\n<p><strong>Antiretrovirals can cause toxic side effects and carry a potentially hefty cost<\/strong> if they have to be taken daily for prevention. The price has fallen to as little as 25 US cents per tablet, but this is still a big discouragement for people who are living on a couple of dollars a day or less.<\/p>\n<p>IAS chief Bertrand Audoin said the prevention trials, combined with proof that male circumcision helps protect men from HIV, showed &#8220;we are in the middle of huge scientific breakthroughs that could change the course of the epidemic in coming years.&#8221;<br \/>\n<!--break--><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Asian Americans have lower AIDS rates than their white counterparts and they are less likely to die of HIV\/AIDS. Asian<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":72448,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9663","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"magazineBlocksPostFeaturedMedia":{"thumbnail":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u-113x150.jpg","medium":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","medium_large":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","large":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","1536x1536":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","2048x2048":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-highlighted-post":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-featured-post-medium":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-featured-post-small":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u-113x90.jpg","colormag-featured-image":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-default-news":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u-113x150.jpg","colormag-featured-image-large":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-elementor-block-extra-large-thumbnail":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-elementor-grid-large-thumbnail":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-elementor-grid-small-thumbnail":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-elementor-grid-medium-large-thumbnail":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg"},"magazineBlocksPostAuthor":{"name":"Admin","avatar":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/53e6cdc30765aade0129f85e5aeb50124b1d3f5bb9a70373be31e4eb328371e0?s=96&d=mm&r=g"},"magazineBlocksPostCommentsNumber":"0","magazineBlocksPostExcerpt":"Asian Americans have lower AIDS rates than their white counterparts and they are less likely to die of HIV\/AIDS. Asian","magazineBlocksPostCategories":["News"],"magazineBlocksPostViewCount":139,"magazineBlocksPostReadTime":3,"magazine_blocks_featured_image_url":{"full":["https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg",113,170,false],"medium":["https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg",113,170,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u-113x150.jpg",113,150,true]},"magazine_blocks_author":{"display_name":"Admin","author_link":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/?author=1"},"magazine_blocks_comment":0,"magazine_blocks_author_image":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/53e6cdc30765aade0129f85e5aeb50124b1d3f5bb9a70373be31e4eb328371e0?s=96&d=mm&r=g","magazine_blocks_category":"<a href=\"#\" class=\"category-link category-link-1\">News<\/a>","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9663","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9663"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9663\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/72448"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9663"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9663"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9663"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}