Early medication for HIV is cost-effective: Study
Cape
Town: Treating people with HIV soon after they become infected is
cost-effective over the long term, according to a study out Wednesday that
focused on South Africa and India. The study in the New England Journal of
Medicine analyzed the economics of giving antiretroviral drugs to people with
HIV before their viral load gets too high.
While
researchers have already determined that early treatment has many health
benefits, its cost -- about $23,000 a year according to the US Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention -- has remained a concern for considering
widespread early treatment in low and middle income countries.
By
projecting the treatment costs over time and accounting for the effects of
better health and fewer infections, researchers found long-term economic
benefits in both countries.
"In
short, early ART is a `triple winner`: HIV-infected patients live healthier
lives, their partners are protected from HIV, and the investment is
superb," said co-author Rochelle Walensky of the Massachusetts General
Hospital. "This study provides a critical answer to an urgent policy
question."
Researchers
chose to focus on South Africa and India because they had the highest numbers
of people with HIV among nine countries studied in a clinical trial known as
HIV Prevention Trials Network (HPTN) 052.
The
trial showed that treatment as prevention dramatically reduced the risks of
viral transmission and also substantially cut back the development of
infections like tuberculosis in the HIV-infected patients. South Africa and
India were also representative, respectively, of the middle and lower income
countries where these questions persist over how early to treat people for HIV.
Early
ART was defined as therapy initiated when the CD4+ T-cell count ranged from 350
to 550 per cubic millimeter, and delayed ART as therapy initiated when the CD4+
count was below 250 per cubic millimeter.
"We
found that early ART substantially improved the rate of survival of infected
patients, greatly decreased the rate of early HIV transmissions, and provided
an excellent return on investment," said the study. For the first five
years, the results showed that 93 percent of patients receiving early ART would
survive, compared with 83 percent of those whose treatment was delayed.
Life
expectancy for the early-treatment group was longer too -- almost 16 years,
compared with nearly 14 years for the delayed treatment group.
"Now
that we know that early ART not only improves clinical and prevention outcomes
but also is a great investment, we need to redouble international efforts to
provide ART to any HIV-infected person who can benefit from it," said
Walensky.
31.10.2013
Cancer vaccine developed to boost
lifespan of patients
Moscow: Russian scientists have developed a vaccine for the
treatment of cancer that can increase the patient`s lifespan more than
two-fold, ITAR-TASS reported Wednesday.
The vaccine, developed at the Institute of Clinical
Immunology in the Siberian branch of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences in
Novosibirsk, has already successfully passed clinical tests, said institute`s
director Vladimir Kozlov.
Currently, it is being administered to patients by injection
at the third and fourth stages of cancer.
"We are deriving dendritic cells from the human body
and loading them with tumour antigens," Kozlov said.
"Dendritic cells process them, then we inject the cells
into the patient and they start working in the body evoking a strong immune
response. That is, they are actively fighting the tumour."
The institute`s creation "is not a classical vaccine,
which is the means to prevent the illness", Kozlov said. "In fact, it
is a cell therapy."
The vaccine is counteracting several types of cancer -
colorectal (bowel) cancer, breast cancer and prostate cancer - and the
institute is ready to start its industrial production, Kozlov added.
However, the scientist added that other types of therapy
were to be used as well, such as chemotherapy and radiation therapy.
31.10.2013
One of the
greatest diseases is to be nobody to anybody
Mother
Teresa
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