Starting May 2004, AIDS Treatment News will email summaries and links
to the full text of new articles, instead of emailing the whole
article. All articles will still be free on our site --
www.aidsnews.org -- with no registration required. We are making this
change so that we can report news immediately, improve our newsletter
by getting statistics on what our readers want, and change online
articles when necessary to reflect new information.

To avoid excessive email we will collect the summaries and send about 5
email announcements per month -- not on a fixed schedule, but when
important news happens.

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To provide a complete record through 2004, we are sending summaries
and links, below, for articles already published in AIDS Treatment News
this year.




*** Clinton Foundation Negotiates $140/Year HIV Treatment, But U.S.
Won't Buy
The Clinton Foundation, World Bank, UNICEF, and the Global Fund to
Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria announced that they could
negotiate prices as low as $140 per year for triple-combination
antiretroviral therapy. But the Bush Administration is refusing to buy
generic medicines for its major HIV treatment program.
Full article: http://www.aidsnews.org/2004/03/clinton140.html


*** Atherosclerosis Risk Increased with HIV; Treatment Effects Unclear
A major report on heart disease and HIV found that HIV infection
itself is associated with increased risk, independently of other
factors like age, cholesterol, and smoking. Another major report did
find differences among antiretrovirals, but the information is hard to
summarize.
http://www.aidsnews.org/2004/03/atherosclerosis.html


*** Atazanavir (Reyataz): New Recommendations If Combined with
Tenofovir (Viread) -- and Warning on Viagra, Cialis, and Levitra
The FDA published new information on drug interactions that patients
taking Reyataz should know.
http://www.aidsnews.org/2004/03/reyataz.html


***Abacavir Hypersensitivity Reaction Predicted by Genetic Test
Researchers in Australia found an accurate test to predict who cannot
tolerate Ziagen (abacavir). This is still a research test, not in
general use.
http://www.aidsnews.org/2004/03/abacavir.html


*** Update on Sculptra (New-Fill) Hearing
An FDA advisory committee unanimously recommended approval of this
facial treatment for people with HIV -- with restrictions to prevent
general cosmetic use, pending data to justify such approval.
http://www.aidsnews.org/2004/03/sculptra.html


*** Lessons from Two "Triple Nuke" Failures (New Training Module)
A CME (continuing medical education) module for physicians explains
the problem with two antiretroviral regimens that failed last year.
Several possible causes for the failure had been proposed. Now it
appears that the problem was too low a genetic barrier to HIV
developing certain resistance mutations.
http://www.aidsnews.org/2004/03/triplefailures.html


*** Retroviruses Conference: Summaries for Physicians
This collection of CME trainings for physicians gives an in-depth
review of major reports from the Retroviruses conference (February 8-11
in San Francisco), focusing on what HIV physicians need to know.
http://www.aidsnews.org/2004/03/retrosummaries.html


*** Medicines for the World: A Way Forward
For poor and middle-income countries we should negotiate large sales
involving many countries, with all the interests at the table. Large
deals and public consensus could make it viable for companies to
develop treatments for diseases affecting poor regions.
http://www.aidsnews.org/2004/03/medicinesforworld.html


*** Atazanavir (Reyataz) New Recommendation with Tenofovir (Viread);
Warning with Viagra, Cialis, and Levitra
On March 19 the FDA notified the public of new prescribing
information and precautions for atazanavir (brand name Reyataz), if
taken in combination with tenofovir (Viread) -- and warned of risks
with Viagra or similar drugs.
http://www.aidsnews.org/2004/02/atazanavir.html


*** Action Alerts: Please Improve Them for Networking
Political action alerts could be much more effective if they were
designed to be shared -- to be easily picked up by other interested
organizations and sent to their members, or to other people and
organizations that listen to them. From our experience we suggest five
ways to make existing action alert work this way.
http://www.aidsnews.org/2004/02/alerts.html


*** FDA Advisory Hearing on New-Fill (Sculptra), March 25, 2004 in
Gaithersburg, Maryland
The FDA will discuss U.S. approval for New-Fill, a facial treatment
that Americans have had to go abroad for, although it is approved in
Europe and has been used by about 100,000 people worldwide. Those who
want to speak at the hearing should notify the FDA by March 15.
http://www.aidsnews.org/2004/02/sculptra.html


*** Antiretroviral Pipeline: New-Drug Reports from Retroviruses
Conference
The three experimental drugs most discussed at the important 11th
Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (\ 8-11, San
Francisco) were: BMS-488043, a new kind of entry inhibitor; Reverset, a
nucleoside analog active against most resistant viruses; and Schering
D, which blocks viral attachment to the CCR5 co-receptor on the cell.
Other compounds discussed included PA-457, SPD-754, GW873140,
GW678248, SN1212/1461, TMC114, TNX-355, PRO140, UK-427,857, AK602,
KRH-2731, mifepristone (RU-486), and chloroquine.
http://www.aidsnews.org/2004/02/newdrugs.html


*** Nevirapine Precautions Published
New instructions tell physicians who is most at risk for rare but
serious side effects when starting this important drug -- for example,
women with a CD4 count above 250.
http://www.aidsnews.org/2004/02/nevirapine.html


*** Micronutrient Supplementation Shows Promise in Placebo-Controlled
Trial
A supplement containing 33 vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants
seemed to help persons with HIV. This trial was organized by Jon
Kaiser, M.D., who has specialized in combining mainstream and
complementary HIV treatments, and is based in part on the work of
Marianna Baum, Ph.D., who has studied nutritional deficiencies in
persons with HIV.
http://www.aidsnews.org/2004/02/micronutrient.html


*** Lipodystrophy: Conference on Imaging Technologies in Clinical
Management, Montreal, April 2-3, 2004
This new conference with leading HIV physicians will look at DEXA and
other imaging technologies to measure the effects of lipodystrophy on
the abnormal wasting or accumulation of body fat.
http://www.aidsnews.org/2004/02/lipo.html


*** "Poppers," Some Other Drugs, May Increase HIV Infection Risk
Users of amphetamines ("crystal"), hallucinogens, or inhaled nitrites
("poppers") had higher rates of HIV infection than non-users,(1) in an
analysis of the Vaxgen trial data presented at the 11th Conference on
Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections, February 8-11, 2004.
http://www.aidsnews.org/2004/02/poppers.html


*** New Testing for Very Early HIV Diagnosis
Because persons newly infected with HIV may be especially infectious
before the body has created antibodies to partially control the
infection, there is a new public-health push to also look for the virus
itself in routine HIV testing. North Carolina has used this approach
statewide for over a year, and discovered the first indications of a
new HIV epidemic among college students, especially African-American
men. Results were reported at the recent Retroviruses conference.
http://www.aidsnews.org/2004/02/earlytest.html


*** Prison HIV and Hepatitis C Sites
Of the hundreds of good Web sites on HIV, hepatitis C, and prison
issues, AIDS Treatment News has chosen about 40 to help you get started
in finding the information or resources you need. Annotated links are
at:
http://www.aidsnews.org/prison/


*** Improving AIDS Conferences with Online Information
Today, scientists and others arrive at major conferences without
knowing whom they should meet and talk to outside of their own field.
The whole medical-research enterprise is damaged when researchers miss
these connections. The key to improvement is to have the main data
presentations online, allowing conferences to focus on exploration and
discussion, instead of lectures that must rush through the new data. We
outline many other advantages, such as allowing researchers to update
their online presentations before or after the conference if they wish.
http://www.aidsnews.org/2004/02/online.html


*** Institute of Medicine Calls for Universal Health Insurance by 2010
On January 14, 2004 the prestigious Institute of Medicine (IOM)
called for the U.S. to implement universal health care by 2010.
Currently 43,000,000 Americans are uninsured, and lack of health
insurance causes 18,000 unnecessary deaths each year in the U.S. Eighty
percent of the uninsured are members of working families -- but a
quarter of U.S. workers are not offered health insurance at all, and
few Americans can afford to buy the expensive individual policies.
These and dozens of other facts in the new report will help anyone who
is making a case for change.
http://www.aidsnews.org/2004/01/IOM.html


*** Remembering Greg Smith
In 1990 Greg Smith was sentenced to 25 years in prison for allegedly
threatening and biting a prison guard while having HIV. For 13 years he
advocated for better prison health care, and was often visited and
helped by members of ACT UP Philadelphia and other prison activists. He
died in prison in November 2003. On January 29 about 75 members of ACT
UP Philadelphia held a memorial demonstration at the home of the
sentencing judge in Haddonfield, New Jersey.
http://www.aidsnews.org/2004/01/GregSmith.html

*** "Shy" Study Suggests New Treatment Mechanism [December 2003]
A study found that socially inhibited persons with HIV did much
worse than others virologically. The researchers suspect that the
biochemistry of chronically high anxiety could increase the growth of
HIV; if so, these effects might be controlled with drugs already
approved for other purposes. This theory should be easy to test in
small clinical trials. If confirmed, it might lead to a new kind of
treatment to reduce viral load and disease progression for some
patients.
http://www.aidsnews.org/2003/12/Shy.html


--
John S James
AIDS Treatment News
www.aidsnews.org