Health monitoring

Health monitoring features

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  Everything okay down there? Screening for anal cancer

  Anal cancer is around 50 times more common in gay men with HIV than it is in the general population. Should we be demanding screening and vaccinations?...

  From:HIV treatment update

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  Testing…testing…one, two, three

  When you visit your HIV clinic, they will be measuring a lot more than just your CD4 count and viral load. What else are they checking and...

  From:HIV treatment update

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  How to talk to your doctor

  You have 15 minutes and the clock is ticking. Are you saying the right thing? Does your doctor understand you? Or even take you seriously? Lindsay Calder...

  From:HIV treatment update

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  HATIP #43/#44, 14th March 2005

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  From:HIV & AIDS treatment in practice

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  HATIP #69, 20th June, 2006

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  From:HIV & AIDS treatment in practice

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  Cervical cancer and you

  The recent death of reality TV star Jade Goody has created a huge upsurge of concern about cervical cancer, and getting screened for it. HIV-positive women are...

  From:HIV treatment update

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  Second-line therapy

  This issue looks at current and future need and options for second-line antiretroviral regimens including challenges of switching, side-effects, costs and resistance in resource-poor settings....

  From:HIV & AIDS treatment in practice

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  Clinical monitoring as effective as CD4 count and viral load for deciding when to switch to second-line ART in poor countries

  This issue reviews monitoring options for switching to second-line in resource-poor settings. ...

  From:HIV & AIDS treatment in practice

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  Clinical staging of HIV disease - featured news report

  Recent evidence on which clinical illnesses are reliable markers of low CD4 counts and HIV disease progression; oral candiasis found to be strong marker....

  From:HIV & AIDS treatment in practice

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  Defining, and then watching for, treatment failure

  A review of various clinical, immunological and virological definitions of antiretroviral treatment failure in resource-limited settings....

  From:HIV & AIDS treatment in practice

Health monitoring in your own words

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  Finally undetectable!

  After almost 15 years of HIV, and six years of viral load testing, I heard on Thursday, June 21st 2001 that my viral load had...

  From:In your own words

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  'I just take the tablets and get on with my life'

  I was diagnosed HIV-positive in 1997. I'm now 65. It was a bit of a shock. It could never happen to me, after all. I...

  From:In your own words

Health monitoring news from aidsmap

• Is a viral load just below 50 copies/ml low enough to ensure the long-term success of HIV therapy?

  Suppressing viral load to below 50 copies/ml may not be enough to ensure the long-term success of antiretroviral therapy, according to a UK study published in the March edition of Clinical Infectious Diseases. Using ultra-sensitive viral load assays, ...

  16 January 2012 | Michael Carter

• Virulence of HIV has increased since first reports of AIDS

  HIV may have evolved to become more virulent over the course of the epidemic, according to the results of a meta-analysis published in the online edition of AIDS.The study estimates that six months after infection, the CD4 cell ...

  22 November 2011 | Michael Carter

• Low HIV viral load doesn't cause inflammation or increase the risk of death

  Low level viral load does not increase inflammation or the risk of death, US investigators report in the online journal PloS One. The investigators had hypothesised that a low viral load would be linked with important markers of inflammation ...

  08 November 2011 | Michael Carter

• Swiss show that concerns about potency of HIV therapy in context of non-subtype B infections are unfounded

  Patients infected with non-B HIV subtypes have virological outcomes which are at least as good – if not better – than those seen in patients with subtype B infection, Swiss investigators report in the online edition of Clinical Infectious ...

  25 October 2011 | Michael Carter

• 'High viral load' should mean over half a million copies, not over 100,000, Rome study suggests

  A study by the University of Rome has found that a substantial proportion of patients with HIV are being diagnosed with viral loads of over half a million copies/ml, and it is these patients who are at raised risk ...

  24 October 2011 | Gus Cairns

• Missed appointments in early years of HIV care associated with longer time to HIV suppression and higher cumulative viral load

  Patients who miss clinic appointments in the two years after they enter HIV care take longer to suppress their viral load to undetectable levels and also have a higher cumulative viral load than patients with high levels of appointment ...

  28 September 2011 | Michael Carter

• Cumulative viral load: an important measure of risk of death in patients with HIV

  Cumulative viral load - the total amount of viral replication measured over a long period - is associated with the risk of death for patients with HIV, US research published in the online edition of Clinical Infectious ...

  12 September 2011 | Michael Carter

• Higher mortality risk of publicly insured HIV patients in the US shows importance of screening for co-morbidities

  Mortality rates are significantly higher among HIV-positive patients in the US whose care is paid for by public compared to private insurance, investigators report in the online edition of AIDS. The study included individuals enrolled in the HIV Outpatient Study ...

  15 August 2011 | Michael Carter

• Ambulatory blood pressure monitoring shows that 15% of HIV patients had undiagnosed high blood pressure

  Approximately 15% of HIV-positive patients had undiagnosed hypertension, Spanish investigators report in the online edition of the Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes.However the study also found that 39% of patients diagnosed with high blood pressure during a ...

  11 August 2011 | Michael Carter

• Variations in mitochondrial DNA affect CD4 gains in black patients taking successful HIV therapy

  Variations in mitochondrial DNA are associated with poorer CD4 cell gains after the initiation of antiretroviral therapy in non-Hispanic black patients, US investigators report in the online edition of the Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes. Black people who had ...

  09 August 2011 | Michael Carter

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Health monitoring news selected from other sources

• Diagnostics: Crucial role hampered by high cost and poor access

  The key to effective treatment is access to robust diagnostics systems, but in developing countries such access is often unavailable.

  01 December 2011 | Financial Times

• Can simple blood tests predict liver cancer?

  FIB-4 could represent a relatively cheap and simple way of screening people with HBV, HCV and other risk factors for the possibility of liver cancer.

  18 November 2011 | CATIE

• Stockouts: A major threat to HIV treatment in Europe

  A key theme at this year’s European AIDS Conference, currently being held in Belgrade, Serbia, is access to treatment and diagnostics.

  14 October 2011 | Key Correspondents

• Towards Lab-Free Tuberculosis Diagnosis

  A report by TAG, the TB/HIV Working Group of the Stop TB Partnership, Imperial College and the MSF Access Campaign on the current state of reserach in TB diagnostics and key roadblocks to the development of a simple point-of-care test for TB suitable for peripheral health centres.

  23 August 2011 | MSF

• Risk Of Heart Attack, Death In HIV Patients Predicted By Heart Ultrasound

  An ultrasound test can tell if people with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and heart disease are at risk of heart attack or death, according to new research reported in Circulation: Cardiovascular Imaging, an American Heart Association journal...

  13 July 2011 | HIV / AIDS News From Medical News Today

• MIT: New blood-testing device can quickly spot cancer cells, HIV

  The microfluidic device, described in the March 17 online edition of the journal Small, is about the size of a dime, and could also detect viruses such as HIV. It could eventually be developed into low-cost tests for doctors to use in developing countries.
  

  28 March 2011 | Nanotechnology News

• CD4s, Viral Load Not Enough to Predict Survival During HIV Treatment

  As AIDS-related illnesses decline and non-AIDS complications become increasingly more common in the modern antiretroviral (ARV) therapy era, looking at six blood markers—not just CD4 cell counts and viral load—will be necessary to make accurate survival predictions.

  08 March 2011 | AIDSMeds

• Biomarkers Could Predict Death In AIDS Patients With Severe Inflammation

  A study in this week's PLoS Medicine suggests that AIDS patients with cryptococcal meningitis who start HIV therapy are predisposed to immune reconstitution inflammatory syndrome (IRIS) - an exaggerated inflammatory immune response that kills up to one-third of affected people - if they have biomarkers (biochemicals) in their blood showing evidence of a damaged immune system th...

  22 December 2010 | HIV / AIDS News From Medical News Today

• Rapid hepatitis C antibody tests show wide range of results

  The first generation of rapid screening tests for the hepatitis C virus (HCV) antibody, which use blood and oral fluids, underwent field testing in September at 4 sites. The tests had considerable variation in performance across the 4 test sites, with wide ranges in sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value, and negative predictive value.

  17 November 2010 | Medscape

• Duke to lead oversight of HIV laboratories worldwide

  The National Institutes of Health (NIH), National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), has awarded Duke University Medical Center up to $52.8 million over the next seven years to support the development, implementation and oversight of external quality assurance programs that monitor laboratories involved in HIV/AIDS research and vaccine trials around the world.

  16 November 2010 | Eurekalert Medicine & Health

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