Mbeki is a coward and his Aids denialism was catastrophic - TAC

The Treatment Action Campaign has launched a blistering attack against former president Thabo Mbeki over his contentious stance on Aids, which has killed hundreds of thousands of South Africans.

Description

• Aids (Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome) is caused by HIV (the Human Immunodeficiency Virus).
• HIV is mainly transmitted through sexual intercourse.
• Once a person is infected, the virus remains in the body for life.
• One can be HIV positive and feel completely well for many years.
• When a pregnant woman is infected, there is a one in three chance of her baby becoming infected if no steps are taken to prevent this.
• Most people infected with HIV will eventually get Aids.
• Aids is a fatal illness.
• There is no drug that can cure HIV infection, but there are drugs that can control the virus and delay the onset of Aids.
• There is no preventative HIV vaccine available at the moment, however research is ongoing to find one.

The Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (Aids) is caused by infection with the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV). HIV attacks and gradually destroys the immune system, which protects the body against infections.

Aids develops during the last stages of HIV infection. Aids is not a single illness, but the whole clinical picture (a syndrome) that occurs when the immune system fails entirely. A person with a failing immune system is susceptible to a variety of infections that are very unlikely to occur in people with healthy immune systems. These are called opportunistic infections because they take advantage of the body's weakened immune system. Certain types of cancers also occur when the immune system fails.

It may take years for a person's immune system to deteriorate to such an extent that the person becomes ill and a diagnosis of Aids is made. During this time (which can last as long as 15 years or possibly even longer), a person may look and feel perfectly well. This explains why so many people are unaware that they are infected with HIV. However, even though they feel healthy, they can still transmit the virus to others.

More than 90% of people living with HIV are in developing countries, with sub-Saharan Africa accounting for two thirds of all the HIV-infected people in the world. Unlike Western countries, where HIV has initially affected predominantly homosexual men, in Africa and developing countries HIV is usually spread by sex between men and women (heterosexual sex).

New findings could boost type 1 diabetes treatment

For six weeks seven-year-old Bethan Westcott-Storer was feeling listless and losing weight, worrying parents Lizzie and Dean. Now aged nine, she's the picture of health, having been diagnosed with type 1 diabetes in November 2014, since when she's been treating herself via an omnipod pump that delivers insulin via a cannula under her skin.

"I felt very weak and tired all the time, and if my friends in the playground said 'do you want to play It?' or something, I'd just feel like 'ohh, not really," Bethan told Reuters during a check-up at the University of Exeter Medical School.

According to her mother, "we noticed that she'd become quite thin, she'd lost a lot of weight, but she didn't have all of the signs that other children normally have with type 1 - she didn't have the excess thirst and urinating. Just lost a lot of weight, so she's been diagnosed for 15 months now."

Exeter scientists have revealed that children diagnosed before the age of seven develop a more aggressive form of the disease than that seen in teenagers. Their research could open up new, differing, treatments for both teenagers and young children. It could even help scientists develop a vaccine that prevents children developing diabetes.

Working alongside scientists from the University of Oslo, the team, led by Professor Noel Morgan and Dr Sarah Richardson, analyzed 100 pancreas samples from people diagnosed with type 1 diabetes shortly before their death. The samples are housed at the Exeter Archival Diabetes Biobank, the world's largest pancreas collection.

According to Richardson, a JDRF career development fellow, "those samples are extremely important because we do not understand the underlying disease process that goes on in these individuals and it's that recent diagnosis that's critical for us to actually look inside the pancreas and see what is going wrong, and the pancreas itself is an extremely inaccessible organ."

The study shows that children diagnosed with type 1 diabetes before the age of seven suffer from insulitis, an inflammatory process which kills off almost all the insulin-producing beta cells in their pancreas. By contrast, those diagnosed as teenagers or older retain unexpectedly large numbers of beta cells, albeit malfunctioning.

"The significance of these findings is that we find that the individuals who are diagnosed young have a very different disease profile to those that are diagnosed older, and that has important implications for potential treatments in that those individuals that are diagnosed young might benefit more from immunotherapeutic therapies, whereas those that are diagnosed older we might need to look at different therapies that reactivate their sleeping beta cells at the same time as applying immunotherapeutic drugs to prevent any reactivation of an immune response," said Richardson.

Morgan told Reuters "it's always been thought that when people get type 1 diabetes they've lost as many as 90 percent of their insulin producing cells from their pancreas. What we've found is that while that might be the case for the younger children it certainly doesn't appear to be true for those that are older. They have quite a considerable reserve of cells left. That's a new insight and it might mean that if we could reactivate those cells we could help them to cope better with their illness."

Chocolate may boost cognitive function

If you're looking for an excuse to chomp that bar of chocolate calling your name, then look no further; a new study suggests eating chocolate at least once weekly may boost cognitive function.

Dr. Georgie Crichton, of the Nutritional Physiology Research Centre at the University of South Australia, and colleagues publish their findings in the journal Appetite.

While chocolate is still perceived as an indulgent treat, studies have increasingly documented the potential health benefits of habitual consumption.

Earlier this month, for example, Medical News Today reported on a study suggesting that eating chocolate daily during pregnancy may benefit fetal growth and development, while an earlier study claims daily chocolate consumption may lower risk of stroke and heart disease.

But how does chocolate intake impact cognitive function? This is what Dr. Crichton and colleagues set out to determine, noting that there is lack of information in this area.

"Little is known about the relationship between chocolate and cognitive functioning or brain health," Dr. Crichton told MNT. "Most of the studies to date have focused on the acute effects of chocolate or cocoa consumption - i.e. consume a chocolate bar/cocoa-rich drink and assess immediate performance. We wanted to examine habitual or normal consumption with cognitive performance."

Vaginal ring reduces risk of HIV by up to 61%

Vaginal ring can safely provide some protection against HIV infection by continuously releasing an experimental antiretroviral drug, say findings published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
[vaginal ring]The silicone vaginal ring continuously releases the antiretroviral drug, dapivirine.
Image credit: International Partnership for Microbicides.In the US, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimate that 1,218,400 people aged 13 years and above are living with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection, an estimated 12.8% of whom are unaware of their condition.

In 2014, 25.8 million people in sub-Saharan Africa had been infected with HIV, half of whom were women.A quarter of new cases in the region occur among adolescent girls and young women.
For this reason, finding effective tools to prevent the spread of infection is considered essential.
The ASPIRE HIV protection study, also known as MTN-020, was set up to investigate the effect of vaginal rings that release drugs.

This was a large clinical trial involving 15 sites in four sub-Saharan African countries: Malawi, South Africa, Uganda and Zimbabwe.ASPIRE looked at whether a silicon vaginal ring that continuously released the drug dapivirine could protect against HIV infection. The ring was replaced every 4 weeks.Starting in 2012, the study enrolled 2,629 women aged 18-45 years who did not have HIV but who were at high risk for HIV infection. Data collection continued until September 2015.

The women were randomly assigned to two groups. One group received a ring containing 25 mg of dapivirine, and a control group received a placebo ring.

Viagra relieves life-threatening condition in swimmers and divers

Asmall dose of Viagra could save the lives of swimmers and divers who experience an abrupt and potentially life-threatening form of pulmonary edema on entering cold water, says research published in Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association.

Moderate drinking could lower heart attack, heart failure risk

Good news for those who like a drink after a hard day's work: consuming three to five drinks a week could lower the risk of heart attack and heart failure. This is according to two new studies by researchers from Sweden and Norway.

According to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), almost 87% of adults in the US have consumed alcohol at some point in their lifetime, and more than 56% have had a drink in the past month.

While there is no doubt that excessive alcohol use is detrimental to health, studies are increasingly suggesting that moderate drinking may have its benefits.

Pope suggests contraception can be condoned in Zika crisis

Pope Francis waves from his popemobile as he arrives in San Cristobal de las Casas, Mexico, Monday, Feb. 15, 2016. Francis is celebrating Mexico's Indians on Monday with a visit to Chiapas state, a center of indigenous culture, where he will preside over a Mass in three native languages thanks to a new Vatican decree approving their use in liturgy. The visit is also aimed at boosting the faith in the least Catholic state in Mexico. (AP Photo/Eduardo Verdugo)

Pope Francis has suggested that women threatened with the Zika virus could use artificial contraception but not abort their fetus, saying there's a clear moral difference between aborting a fetus and preventing a pregnancy.

Francis was asked Wednesday en route home from Mexico if abortion or birth control could be considered a "lesser evil," when faced with the Zika-linked cases .