AIDS drugs still work but TB a deadly addition to the virus

According to a new report, ten years after they were introduced in Europe and North America, HIV/AIDS drugs remain effective but many patients are not being put on them soon enough.

Scientists carrying out a review of the treatment ten years on say treatments still work as well as they did initially.

Experts were always concerned that the AIDS virus would become resistant to the treatments and deaths would increase, but research published ahead of an international AIDS conference in Toronto later this month has shown this has not happened.

However though the combinations of drugs reduce mortality and progression to AIDS by about 80-90 percent, tuberculosis (TB) has become a deadly co-infection in many patients.

Professor Matthias Egger, of the University of Bern in Switzerland, says people need to be diagnosed and start treatment earlier and the drugs would achieve even more, but TB has become more of an issue.

The Antiretroviral Therapy Cohort Collaboration report based it's analysis on data of more than 22,200 HIV positive people in Europe and North America who started treatment between 1995 and 2003.

Current figures suggest that more than 40 million people worldwide are living with HIV/AIDS, and the majority are in sub-Saharan Africa.

According to the World Health Organisation as many as 1.3 million people in low- and middle-income countries were receiving HIV/AIDS drugs by the end of 2005.

Egger, a co-author of the study, says there is widespread consensus that patients should start treatment when their CD4 cell count, a measure of immune system response, dropped below 350 or if the person was unwell or showed symptoms of illness.

The scientists say people who start treatment with a CD4 count less than 200 have a higher risk of their illness progressing and of dying of HIV/AIDS than patients with a higher baseline count.

Twenty five years ago when HIV/AIDS first came to light things were very different for those newly diagnosed and there was little that could be done to help those with the virus.

The introduction of effective anti-HIV/AIDS treatments has made living with virus a long-term reality for many.

A new publication 'Living with HIV' produced by the National Aids Manual (NAM) in the UK, tackles key topics such as diagnosis, treatment, working, sex, mother-to-baby transmission and the criminalisation of HIV transmissions and it illustrates just how much the situation for people with HIV has changed.

Although the treatment regimes and outcomes have improved, experts remind that the drugs still carry toxicity risks and those with HIV have a greater risk of developing certain cancers and heart problems.

The manual contains first-hand accounts of the reality of life with HIV/AIDS and provides an introduction to the issues which so many of affected by HIV live with, on a day-by-day basis.

For free copies of the book, available to anyone with HIV/AIDS, telephone NAM on 0207 840 0050.