Breakthrough in HIV Medications: Two Australian Men and One In Rockford 'Cured'

Lance Dauengaugh, who was tested HIV positive in 1997, has turned to a healthy lifestyle and avoids drinking and smoking and takes his medicine regularly. Highly Active Antiretroviral Therapy was introduced in the same year. In July, World Health Organization has start encouraging all gay men to take antiretroviral medications as a precaution of HIV positive.

Health professionals and activists criticise the medicine saying it is unaffordable and that minor dosage problems can compromise on the effectiveness of the drug. They also suggested that since the medications are there as an alternative, they'd engage in unprotected sex. 

The suggestion by WHO might not erase stigma of HIV, transmitted either by unprotected sex or intravenous drug use. Dauenbaugh suggests he's been lucky as his medications are working. 

Shelton Kay, director of Crusader Community Health's HIV program said that living with HIV is equivalent to living with diabetes or hypertension, in which proper monitoring and care can help living a normal life.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that though there is such progress against the disease, in the United States every single year, an approximate 50,000 new HIV infections are detected, out of which 63% of those affected are gay men engaging in sexual activity. In the entire world, 38 million people worldwide are affected by it. 

Dauenbaugh's partner Todd Flied, to passed away due to complications from AIDS. He lived with it for 27 years and was confined to a wheelchair and was paralyzed at the young age of 20. His weight took a major hit as he weighed 160 pounds when he was a little healthy, but when he died was 70.

Illinois Department of Public Health's Web site said that before the use of antiretrovirals, in 1996, in Winnebago County, 43 reported cases and 28 reported deaths were reported and after the use of the medications, 37 cases and only 10 deaths were reported.

Dauenbaugh said, "You can't contract HIV ffrom shaking hands or hugging or kiss on the cheek. But fear of infection causes those living with HIV to be treated like lepers. Sometimes it's easier to remain silent and avoid scorn. Few people living with HIV are willing to share their stories. I thank the Lord for all the people that I've had in my life. You've got to be thankful. I don't know how much time the Lord's given me, but whatever it is, I'm thankful."

In Australia, two men were "cleared" of HIV after receiving bone marrow transplants to cure cancer. On July 19, a team of Sydney doctors announced that no signs of HIV were found in the men. Earlier, only man has been said to be cured of HIV, Timothy Ray Brown, after receiving a bone marrow transplant.

David Cooper, leading HIV specialist at Sydney's St. Vincent Hospital and direcotor of Kirby Institute, noted, "One of the Sydney patients received a bone marrow transplant from a donor with one of two possible copies of the protective gene mutation while the other patient received one from a donor with no copies of it. We're so pleased that both patients are doing reasonably well,'' said Professor Cooper, who also directs the University of NSW's Kirby Institute.  

In Australia, currently, there are about 26,800 people living with HIV. 

Protein Temporarily Reversed Type 2 Diabetes in Mice

A single injection of a certain protein temporarily reversed symptoms of diabetes in mice, researchers report.

The mice had diet-induced diabetes, which is the equivalent of type 2 diabetes in people. The injection of the protein FGF1 restored their blood sugar levels to a healthy range for more than two days. It also reversed insulin insensitivity, which is the underlying cause of diabetes.

The injection did not cause the kinds of side effects commonly seen with many diabetes medications, according to the Salk Institute scientists, who report their findings in the July 16 issue of Nature.

The findings could help in efforts to develop safer, more effective diabetes drugs for people, the researchers said.

"Controlling glucose [blood sugar] is a dominant problem in our society," study co-corresponding author Ronald Evans, director of Salk's Gene Expression Laboratory in La Jolla, Calif., said in an institute news release. "And FGF1 offers a new method to control glucose in a powerful and unexpected way."

"Many previous studies that injected FGF1 showed no effect on healthy mice," co-corresponding author Michael Downes, a Salk senior staff scientist, said in the news release. "However, when we injected it into a diabetic mouse, we saw a dramatic improvement in glucose."

Much more research is needed before it may be possible to use the protein to develop a drug to treat people with diabetes, the study authors noted. And animal research often does not pan out in human trials.

Nearly 30 million Americans have type 2 diabetes.

THERE'S NO QUICK FIX FOR DIABETES

Pre-diabetes is not actually officially recognised as a disease. It doesn’t appear on the World Health Organisation list of conditions, but doctors and researchers increasingly use the term to describe people who, they suspect, are on the cusp of developing diabetes. They may have no symptoms of ill-health, but their blood sugar levels are at the upper range of normal. Thanks to heavy marketing by the pharmaceutical industry, there is increasing pressure to prescribe diabetic medication for them – to reduce their chances of developing full-blown type 2 diabetes.

The toxic combination of increased life expectancy and a diet that is high in sugar, salt and fat is undoubtedly causing type 2 diabetes to reach epidemic proportions. This single condition takes up 10 per cent of the entire NHS budget, thanks to the litany of complications it brings.

The risk of stroke in newly treated type 2 diabetics, for example, is more than double that of the general population. People with diabetes are four times more likely to have cardiovascular disease. Between 20 and 30 per cent of diabetics have suffered damage to their renal system, leading to kidney failure and the need for dialysis. Damage to the delicate blood vessels in the eyes of diabetics is a leading cause of blindness, while damage to nerves is a major cause of foot wounds and ulcers, which may result in amputation.

Prevention is, of course, better than cure, so there is an argument for identifying pre-diabetics, treating them and encouraging lifestyle changes. But writing in the British Medical Journal, John Yudkin, a professor of medicine at University College London, has challenged this. He points out that the term "pre-diabetes" medicalises perfectly healthy individuals, and risks placing “unsustainable burdens” on health care systems.

Organisations such as Diabetes UK strongly disagree. I have some sympathy with their position. Too many people consider type 2 diabetes as nothing more than an irritant, something that can easily be fixed with a pill. They are wrong. Regardless of how well it is controlled, type 2 diabetes is a progressive disease that results in the need to increase drug therapies over time.

A recent study conducted in Australia showed that after six years, 44 per cent of patients no longer responded to oral medication and required insulin injections. Indeed, oral medication eventually fails in most people, meaning that injections are almost inevitable at some point. So if we can identify individuals who are at risk sooner – when they are pre-diabetic – rather than later, it must be advantageous for both the patient and the NHS.

However, there is still something inherently dishonest about the term pre-diabetes. It suggests that, without intervention, it will inevitably lead to type 2; but that is not the case, as Prof Yudkin explains. For pre-diabetes, the risk of progressing to diabetes is about 10-20 per cent. Furthermore, he argues that there is no proven benefit from treating pre-diabetics with drugs. So the medical profession is needlessly causing worry and distress in most of those it labels with this condition. And it has been made worse by the American Diabetic Association, which in 2010 widened the parameters for what is considered pre-diabetes, so that now even more people fall within the range.

Medicine is not as clear-cut as we’d like it to be. The truth is that most diseases are defined by arbitrary cut-off points, and diabetes is no different. Anything above a certain blood sugar level is deemed to be pathological, and results in a diagnosis. As a clinical tool, the term pre-diabetic is useless.

Some doctors argue that this doesn’t matter if it means people can be persuaded to adopt a healthier lifestyle as a result of a diagnosis. But the worry is that if the parameters for a diagnosis of pre-diabetes are allowed to be set as ludicrously wide as they are at the moment, so many people will be diagnosed with it that it will become the norm. It would lose its shock factor: if a third of people have pre-diabetes, what does it matter?

So the risk is, it would have quite the opposite effect to that intended. It would simply make even more people complacent about diabetes.