Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2002. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
The XIV International AIDS Conference in Barcelona, Spain
Information Bulletin #16 - August 2002
The fourteenth International AIDS Conference took place in early July in Barcelona, Spain. An oppressive haze of depressing reports about the tens of millions of people worldwide with AIDS with no hope of obtaining any anti-HIV treatments persisted throughout the conference. In one small study in the Ivory Coast, participants were given a three-drug combination of anti-HIV meds and the rate of opportunistic infections - including the deadly scourge of tuberculosis - decreased by 80%. Activists and scientists agreed that stopping the exploding AIDS epidemic is now a matter of political will, and the money to pay for it. Researchers presented proof that their work is bettering our understanding of HIV, leading to ways to fine-tune treatment strategies. There were some encouraging results for people who are already on an anti-HIV treatment combination (HAART), and for people waiting to start treatment. More information trickled out regarding the usefulness of stopping treatment under certain conditions for a planned period of time, which is called a structured treatment interruption (STI). Study after study demonstrated that even well tolerated drugs can cause mild to severe side effects over time. The effect of anti-HIV drugs on the liver got quite a bit of attention. One study concluded that people who were both HIV-positive and hepatitis C positive were more likely to die from liver damage caused by their HIV meds than their hepatitis C infection. Another study said it was all right to take both anti-HIV meds and anti-HCV meds at the same time, although the potential side effects were something to carefully watch out for. Whether it's your liver, your heart, or your blood, high levels of lipids (fat) in the blood require treatment before they cause a wide range of symptoms and diseases that researchers are almost sure they cause. With an eye towards potential side effects caused by long term use of HAART, researchers presented several studies that suggest that the federal guidelines for HIV treatment might recommend starting treatment before it is really needed. Of course, scientists continued to wrangle over the meaning of the results of all of the studies presented, and not much was universally agreed upon except that we need more treatment for HIV and care, and the money to pay for it.
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Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2002. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
