United Kingdom has among the highest reported rates of primary resistance to HIV drugs worldwide

News_Medical Net ^ | 11/26/05

[Dane]

United Kingdom has among the highest reported rates of primary resistance to HIV drugs worldwide Medical Study News Published: Saturday, 26-Nov-2005

Those infected with HIV in the UK have one of the highest rates of resistance to anti-HIV drugs of anywhere in the world, prompting fears of a second wave epidemic of resistant virus, a new study claims in the British Medical Journal (BMJ).

The study authors are concerned that the large reductions in deaths and improvements to health since people with HIV were given combinations of drugs (combination antiretroviral therapy) may be compromised because of this.

Using national data on HIV positive cases, the researchers tested patients for resistance to the antiretroviral drugs before embarking on the treatment. Tests were conducted on 2,357 patients between 1996 and 2003 - thus researchers could track if there were changes to resistance patterns as time went on.

They found that 335 people showed some degree of resistance to one or more antiretroviral drugs in total. Most of these people - 257 - were resistant to drugs within one class only, 44 cases showed resistance to drugs within two classes and 34 showed resistance to drugs within all three commonly used drug classes.

Overall, this equates to a 14% rate of resistance to one or more of these drugs among the group studied over the whole time period. The resistance had reached an estimated 19% for the most recent time period of 2002-2003.

The UK's 14% rate of resistance was considerably higher than the 7% estimate for chronically infected patients in the USA, 6% in France and 10% elsewhere in Europe. Direct comparisons should be treated cautiously, however, as different studies have used different definitions of resistance. Using a more conservative definition of resistance (high level resistance to at least one drug) gives an overall estimate of 9% for the UK for the years 1996-2003, with the rate being 12% in 2002-3.

The authors say: 'The United Kingdom has among the highest reported rates of primary resistance to HIV drugs worldwide. By limiting the therapeutic options for a significant number of patients, the secondary epidemic of drug resistant HIV represents a major clinical and public health problem.

[Dane]

.

[Just mythoughts]

The only PC disease/virus of this world. Sadly it also appears to be the only disease/virus that prevention is not primary concern.

[agere_contra]

We Brits have more immunity to poisonous DNA chain terminators and protease-inhibitors? Good for us.

The HIV virus has never been isolated. Consequently the ELISA and WB tests used to detect HIV have never been calibrated against viral isolate.

Moreover: 90% of AIDs deaths in America during the AZT period (when AIDs treatment consisted of massive doses of lethally dangerous AZT) were due to liver failure. It's almost as if AIDs patients weren't actually infected with any kind of virus: they were just showing up as "positive" on an uncalibrated serological test and then being slowly poisoned to death. With the full force of the Law to ensure compliance with treatment.

Iatrogenic homocide has a long and distinguished history: mercury-based cures for Syphilis, the clioquinol cure that caused the SMON disaster in Japan, the Salk vaccine for Polio. AZT has outdone all of these: and has passed the torch onto the cocktail of "anti-virals" currently used for AIDs treatment. These are less deadly than AZT: so doctors have seen a rapid improvement in patient mortality. But simply not poisoning patients in the first place would appear to be a better clinical strategy.