Friday, November 20, 2009
The Center for AIDS is hiring!
The CFA seeks a manager of development and communications. You can learn more about the organization, the position, and the process for applying from the pdf at this link.
AIDS rarely cause of death in older people with HIV
"A French study of a group of people with HIV aged over 60 has found that over a four-year period, one in seven of the group died ? but not a single death was attributable to an AIDS-defining illness. The findings from the French COREVIH Cohort, presented at last week's European AIDS Clinical Society conference in Colgne, underline the increasingly strong realisation in HIV medicine that as patients with HIV on antiretroviral therapy age, the medical problems they face will have much more to do with diseases of ageing than AIDS-defining illnesses."
PI monotherapy: okay as maintenance?
"An entire session at the 12th European AIDS Conference was devoted to trials of different ritonavir-boosted protease inhibitors (PI/r) used as the sole drug in an antiretroviral regimen.
Several trials of protease inhibitor therapy have produced long-lasting viral suppression statistically non-inferior to two-class therapy. Most successful trials have switched patients to PI monotherapy as a maintenance regimen after starting with combination therapy but some success continues to be seen in trials using monotherapy from the start.
The failure of a trial using a single protease inhibitor as initial regimen, however, was a warning that it is possible to take this approach too far, and doubts remain about the long-term safety of the approach in terms of its ability to suppress HIV in places like the central nervous system and genital mucosa."
Kidney function continues to decline even with anti-HIV treatment
"Although [anti-HIV treatment] appears to help curb kidney function decline, patients who achieved durable viral suppression continue to manifest substantial loss of [kidney function]." (Link may require registration.)
New European treatment guidelines
The European AIDS Clinical Society has released a 2009 edition of its treatment guidelines. The new guidelines are available here, in pdf.
The CFA to close for Thanksgiving
The CFA will be closed on Thursday, Nov. 26 and on Friday, Nov. 27; The Center will reopen at 9 a.m. on Monday, Nov. 30. RITA Weekly will be on hiatus until Friday, Dec. 11.
|