Dr. Paul Thompson, UCLA School
of Medicine professor of neurology and author of a new brain scan
study, said a major risk of HIV now is brain damage, even as drug
cocktails allow people with the virus to live longer.
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Friday, November 11, 2005
LOS ANGELES — The cognitive
functions of people with HIV remain vulnerable even as drug cocktails
help HIV-positive individuals live longer, neurologists who study AIDS
now know, the Los Angeles Times reported. A study published last month
by the National Academy of Sciences showed, via 3-D brain scans, up to
a 15-percent tissue loss in the centers of the brain that regulate
movement and coordination. Researchers also found erosion of the
brain’s language and reasoning centers in people with HIV. Neurologists
who study the disease already have known that drug cocktails that
extend lives do not protect the brain from the virus. The new study
proves what many feared. “As people are living longer, the major risk
of HIV is not the immune system anymore, but the brain,” Dr. Paul
Thompson, professor of neurology at the UCLA School of Medicine and
author of the brain scan study, told the Times. “People who are doing
well with HIV, living with it for over 10 years, have this progressive
damage going on in the brain, well before symptoms are obvious.” This
damage could be reflected in people with HIV via everything from minor
problems with memory to the possibility of early-onset dementia,
officials said.
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Crystal
methamphetamine use among gay and bisexual men in San Francisco appears
to be falling, according to new research. Using interviews with more
than 4,000 self-identified gay and bisexual men, the Stop AIDS Project
said last week that half as many men reported using the drug compared
with two years ago. In the current questionnaire, 10 percent of men
interviewed said they had used meth in the past six months. Two years
ago, the result was 18 percent, the group said. “For us, this is a very
good sentinel of a shift or a change,” said Dr. Willi McFarland of the
San Francisco Department of Public Health’s Office of AIDS. A 2004
study found that the risk of contracting HIV doubles for gay men who
use crystal meth.
NEW YORK — Buoyed by a legislative
victory in California and a court ruling in Arizona, advocacy groups
say they are making significant headway in efforts to ensure that
HIV-positive people have the same access as other patients to kidney
and liver transplants. California recently became the first state to
prohibit insurers from denying coverage for organ transplants based
solely on a person’s HIV status. In Arizona, a judge ruled that the
state’s Medicaid program can’t deny a liver transplant to an
HIV-positive woman on the basis of her health status. “There are a lot
of optimistic signs,” said Jon Givner, who heads the HIV Project at the
Lambda Legal Defense & Education Fund, a New York-based gay-rights
group. “When presented with the evidence, reasonable people have a hard
time coming to the conclusion that an HIV-positive person should be
denied a transplant.” In the past, health leaders often refused
transplants for HIV-positive people, believing that the always-tight
supply of donor organs should be directed toward patients whose
survival prospects weren’t clouded by the complication of HIV. However,
the development of effective anti-retroviral therapy extended the
longevity of HIV-positive people and changed the thinking of many
experts.
HALIFAX (AP) — Gay citizens must be
consulted to develop a health care system that is better able to treat
them, says Ontario’s health minister. George Smitherman, who was in
Halifax last week to address the Rainbow Health Coalition’s health and
wellness conference, said medical workers are often unprepared for the
needs of patients with different sexual orientations. Alcohol and drug
abuse, depression and HIV/AIDS are more common among people who are not
heterosexual. And Smitherman, who was Ontario’s first openly gay
legislator, said medical workers can neglect sexual orientation when
looking for root causes or treatment options. “Much of this is
behavioral in nature and it does require a health care system that is
responsive to needs, but it also requires community leadership,’’
Smitherman said before his speech. Smitherman said Ontario is
developing a network of offices to make health care decisions at the
community level.
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