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rfmcdonaldThanks to Will Baird for letting me know about this Swiss research on HIV/AIDS.
This outcome in itself isn't counterintuitive, but I tend to think that there is some legitimate concern that this might be understood, as the news spreads and gets distorted as in a game of telephone or Chinese whispers (no one are being treated can transmit the disease, say, and therefore condoms aren't nearly as necessary). This is particularly true given how many HIV infections are transmitted to others in the first few months of the initially infected person's own infection. UNAIDS and the World Health Organization are quite right to strongly recommend the continued use of condoms.
Slashdot and Joe. My. God host extended discussions.
Swiss HIV experts have produced the first-ever consensus statement to say that HIV-positive individuals on effective antiretroviral therapy and without sexually transmitted infections (STIs) are sexually non-infectious. The statement is published in this week’s Bulletin of Swiss Medicine (Bulletin des médecins suisses). The statement also discusses the implications for doctors; for HIV-positive people; for HIV prevention; and the legal system.
The statement, on behalf of the Swiss Federal Commission for HIV / AIDS was authored by four of Switzerland’s foremost HIV experts: Prof Pietro Vernazza, of the Cantonal Hospital in St. Gallen, and President of the Swiss Federal Commission for HIV / AIDS; Prof Bernard Hirschel from Geneva University Hospital; Dr Enos Bernasconi of the Lugano Regional Hospital; and Dr Markus Flepp, president of the Swiss Federal Office of Public Health’s Sub-committee on the clincal and therapeutic aspects of HIV / AIDS.
The statement’s headline statement says that “after review of the medical literature and extensive discussion,” the Swiss Federal Commission for HIV / AIDS resolves that, “An HIV-infected person on antiretroviral therapy with completely suppressed viraemia (“effective ART”) is not sexually infectious, i.e. cannot transmit HIV through sexual contact.”
It goes on to say that this statement is valid as long as:
* the person adheres to antiretroviral therapy, the effects of which must be evaluated regularly by the treating physician, and
* the viral load has been suppressed (< 40 copies/ml) for at least six months, and
* there are no other sexually transmitted infections.
The article begins by stating that the Commission “realises that medical and biologic data available today do not permit proof that HIV-infection during effective antiretroviral therapy is impossible, because the non-occurrence of an improbable event cannot be proven. If no transmission events were observed among 100 couples followed for two years, for instance, there might still be some such events if 10,000 couples are followed for ten years. The situation is analogous to 1986, when the statement ‘HIV cannot be transmitted by kissing’ was publicised. This statement has not been proven, but after 20 years’ experience its accuracy appears highly plausible.”
This outcome in itself isn't counterintuitive, but I tend to think that there is some legitimate concern that this might be understood, as the news spreads and gets distorted as in a game of telephone or Chinese whispers (no one are being treated can transmit the disease, say, and therefore condoms aren't nearly as necessary). This is particularly true given how many HIV infections are transmitted to others in the first few months of the initially infected person's own infection. UNAIDS and the World Health Organization are quite right to strongly recommend the continued use of condoms.
Slashdot and Joe. My. God host extended discussions.
