Bill Weintraub

Even with HAART, HIV Damages Brain

10-12-2005

This article is one of many reports of ongoing problems among men infected with HIV even when HAART -- Highly Active Anti-Retroviral Therapy -- is successful in preventing progression to frank AIDS.

In addition, HAART does not protect against other anally-transmitted pathogens.

Such as HPV, which causes anal cancer.

Ninety-five percent (!!!) (95%) of HIV+ men are infected with anal HPV.

Fifty-seven percent (!!!) (57%) of HIV negative gay and bi men are infected with anal HPV.

They were infected through anal penetration.

(By the way: HPV is an easily transmitted virus.

That the percentage of HIV negative gay men infected with HPV is not higher, STRONGLY suggests that a significant portion of gay men DO NOT DO ANAL.

What percentage?

We don't know, because the AIDS prevention establishment, which controls the funding, resolutely refuses to ask that question.

I wonder why.

What we do know is that those who persist in anal penetration, render themselves vulnerable to HPV, anal cancer, HIV, and brain damage.)

HIV Thins Regions of the Brain

By Randy Dotinga

HealthDay Reporter

TUESDAY, Oct. 11 (HealthDay News) -- In disturbing news for HIV patients, research now provides visual evidence that the AIDS virus ravages some parts of the brain, even in those who follow powerful drug regimens to remain healthy.

By using high-tech scanners, researchers from two American universities found that the brains of HIV patients were 15 percent thinner in areas that control language, planning and movement. It didn't matter if the patients were on a drug regimen known as HAART, which often allows infected individuals to keep the virus from destroying the immune system.

"The drugs clearly aren't stopping the destruction of brain tissue," said study co-author Paul M. Thompson, a neuroscience researcher at the University of California, Los Angeles.

An estimated 40 million people worldwide are infected with the AIDS virus -- about 1 percent of those aged 15 to 49 -- and many don't have access to the antiviral medicines that have turned HIV infection into a largely treatable condition for many in the developed world.

A large percentage of HIV patients suffer from neurological problems; one study put the number at 40 percent.

In the new study, Thompson and his colleagues from UCLA and the University of Pittsburgh used magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to create three-dimensional brain images of 40 subjects. Of those, 26 were HIV patients and 14 were healthy "controls."

The thickness of the brain in three areas -- the primary sensor, motor and premotor cortices -- was 15 percent lower in HIV patients. The other three-quarters of the brain were unaffected, the study found.

"Now you can catch AIDS red-handed," said Thompson, who added that the study, appearing in this week's online issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, was the first of its kind. "You can see the damage it inflicts on the brain in great detail."

What does this mean for HIV patients? They're likely to suffer from brain damage, Thompson said, "although it may not get to the degree where you experience noticeable symptoms."

The next step is to determine how to stop the disease from attacking the brain. But, while the virus can penetrate the brain, drugs typically can't because of a natural barrier that protects the organ from foreign materials in the blood.

"The brain becomes a kind of sanctuary where the drugs can't follow," Thompson said.

Dr. Nick Fox, a professor of neurology at University College London, who's familiar with the findings, said the new research sends an important message to health-care professionals about the need to remember about HIV's effects on the brain.

It "reminds us of the need to aggressively treat these threats to our limited stock of gray cells," Fox said.

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In addition, a report on the BBC noted that "while many neurological complications are more common in advanced Aids, others, including HIV-associated cognitive disorder, may occur in HIV positive people who have relatively high CD4 counts."

The response of the gay male / HIV community?

Fuck on:

Seattle Times

Sunday, October 9, 2005

Vital Signs

News about health and medicine

HIV: "POZ Parties" may raise health risks

Parties for HIV-positive gay men to meet others infected with the virus may help to prevent its spread, but scientists say the events may also raise the risk of exposure to superinfections.

So-called "POZ Parties" began in New York in the 1990s as informal gatherings for HIV positive gay men.

Dr. Michael Clatts and colleagues at the National Development and Research Institute in New York, who questioned 115 men from 10 POZ parties in 2003, fear the events could lead to the spread of drug-resistant strains of the virus.

Drug-resistance, when treatment no longer works, has become a problem in wealthy countries where antiretroviral drugs have been available for several years. Viruses mutate and can become resistant to one or more antiretroviral therapies.

The scientists said the high rates of unprotected sex at the venues and having multiple partners also increased the risk of other sexually transmitted infections.

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This article is surprisingly demure, especially for Seattle.

"Parties for HIV-positive gay men to meet others infected with the virus ..."

Of course they're not just "meeting" at these "informal gatherings."

They're barebacking.

With multiple partners.

The very thing which created the epidemic.

Why the article doesn't say so -- beats me.

In any case, the alleged tendency of HIV+ men to bareback with other HIV+ men is called "sero-sorting."

In other words, men "sort" themselves sexually according to HIV status:

poz barebacks with poz, and neg with neg.

And it's been hailed -- amazingly enough -- by certain AIDS prevention experts as a way of slowing the spread of the virus.

Of course, it doesn't slow the spread of variant and drug-resistant strains.

But in the bizarre world of AIDS prevention, serosorting is considered progress.

There's a far better way to stop the spread of the virus, and one which might give the poz guys a *chance* at surviving:

Stop doing anal.

But hey.

They're just gay men, and it's more important that they fuck than that they live.

Right?

Guys, there's a zillion of these articles.

I don't post them all -- because then I'd post nothing else.

Bottom, as it were, line:

An anus is not a vagina.

There is NO risk-free way to penetrate or be penetrated anally.

Greg Milliken has an excellent post, titled What choice?, about the on-going complicity of the AIDS prevention establishment and the safer-sex boyz in this hideous human disaster, which affects you every day of your life.

Don't let them get away with it.

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Greg Milliken

Re: Even with HAART, HIV Damages Brain

10-12-2005

There you go. Irrefutable proof that those running the ASOs suffer from brain damage.

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