Search for a Cure- The Latest News

Reasons For Hope (RFH)

is Search For A Cure's national HIV treatment news series.

RFH covers the latest in developing therapies for treating HIV/AIDS.

RFH is published in over 90 community newspapers and found on many websites for people infected or affected by HIV/AIDS. We encourage your comments and critiques. Email hope@sfac.org Feel free to copy and distribute any and all RFH articles.

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Why We Should All be in a Clinical Trial

It is hard to get people to join a study of new medicines nowadays. This is mostly because people think the therapies we have are good enough. It's not true. HIV medicines fail some people. And they are too expensive for most of the world to use.

The medicines we have are not a cure, are a lifelong financial burden and have lots of side effects. The only way to see if new therapies work is to test them on people with HIV. The only way to see if a vaccine will work is to test it on people without HIV. If we want the day to come that HIV is a thing of the past the most important thing we can all do is find a study that needs us and join it.

the latest news

March 2008
Yes We Can

By David Scondras

All of us hope that there will be an AIDS vaccine someday. Most scientists believe that this will take a great deal of time.

But we can end AIDS now with what we already know.

It will be much more difficult without having a vaccine that protects from HIV, but it can be done. By all of us working together.

Ending any epidemic means getting the rate of infection lower than one newly infected person infected by a person already infected. As soon as the average rate of infection falls below one new infection for each person already infected, the epidemic will eventually burn out.With this idea in mind, there are five practical steps we could take to ending the epidemic.

continued...

January 2008
Smear the Queer

By Robert Krebs

It would be hard not to hear hype about the new ‘gay plague’, these days on the news, blogs and websites.

Researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, released a study which looked at an outbreak of staph infection in the Castro district of San Francisco and among gay men in Boston.

Binh Diep (the lead author in the study) made remarks to the press like:
We probably had it here first, and now it is spreading elsewhere… This is a national problem, and San Francisco is at the epicenter. Dr. Diep also said in his press release: The potential widespread dissemination of multi-resistant form of USA300 into the general population is alarming.

What was alarming is that a well educated expert in health would put out medical information that is totally wrong....

April 2007:
S.C. sitting on HIV/AIDS 'bomb'

HERE'S ANOTHER instance where South Carolina is first where it would rather be last: More than 80 percent of HIV/AIDS patients on waiting lists for life-saving medications in the United States and its territories live in South Carolina. And many on the Palmetto State's waiting list could stay there until they die ? unless legislators exercise leadership and compassion and approve enough money to serve them all.

The S.C. House has placed $3 million in one-time money in its proposed budget to fund the state's AIDS drug assistance program. But health officials and HIV/AIDS advocates say $8 million is needed. (The state already allocates $500,000 annually to the cause.) Here's hoping the Senate better understands the need and proposes ongoing funding that ends the waiting list for good.

South Carolina is one of only two states in the continental United States ? Montana is the other ? with a waiting list. Alaska and Puerto Rico also have lists. On March 1, there were 571 people on the four waiting lists, according to statehealthfacts.org, the Kaiser Family Foundation Website. Of that number, 463 were South Carolinians. Montana had 20 on its list, while Alaska had 13 and Peurto Rico 75.

August 2006:
Ending the Epidemic

It is time to end the AIDS epidemic in the United States.It is a realistic goal.Some facts from official sources:

In San Francisco, one out of every four gay men is infected with HIV.
The gay population of San Francisco has gone up by 25% during the past ten years.
The total number of people with HIV infection has also gone up as people live longer using antiviral drugs that stave off disease progression.

Given these facts, anyone would predict with good reason that the number of new infections would go steadily up as both the number of people carrying HIV and the number of people likely to be exposed increase. They would be wrong.

For the first time since the epidemic began, the HIV transmission rate in San Francisco went down -it is 20% lower than it was in 2001.

Many scientists and activists have offered explanations for this unexpected drop in transmissions. Perhaps it is because gay men are starting to seek out partners that have the same HIV status (called sero-sorting) thus engaging in what amounts to a kind of voluntary quarantine.

Spring 2006:
Chemical Condoms

The search for a way to stop the epidemic continues on many fronts including vaccines, microbicides, and chemical prophylaxis.

There has been progress in each of these areas. But it is slow. By all estimates, vaccines are many years away. If the vaccines with the most promise which are in testing right now turn out to be effective it would still be 5-10 years before they would be available to the public--and that is if everything goes well.

Microbicides are still in the safety testing phase. Microbicides are lubricants which contain chemicals that kill HIV. They are very important not only because they may protect a person from getting HIV and other sexually transmitted illnesses but also because women and gay men can control their use rather than only rely upon a partner to use a condom.

There is good safety data on the use of tenofovir, an antiviral drug, in a gel as a microbicide. Early this year a study was released showing that the use of tenofovir ( Viread) mixed in a gel as a microbicide was safe. Dr. Kenneth Mayer, director of the Brown University AIDS program, along with his colleagues looked at 84 women ages 18 to 45 finding that 94% were happy with the gel and the use of the microbicide cause no serious side effects.