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AIDS and HIV medical research setbacks announced at the International Conference in Amsterdam prove that the road remains long before finding universally effective treatments
The 22nd International Conference on AIDS was the opportunity on Tuesday to confirm concerns about the dangers for the embryo of an otherwise promising drug, dolutegravir.
The 22nd International AIDS Conference was an opportunity, Tuesday , to confirm concerns about the dangers for the embryo of an otherwise promising drug, dolutegravir.
Four cases of neural tube defects, the central nervous system of the embryo, were recorded between August 2014 and May 2018 in Botswana during the examination of 426 pregnant seropositive women who had taken this treatment before expecting a baby.
These malformations can cause severe deformity of the baby. brain or vertebrae, frequently resulting in the child being stillborn.
This amounts to malformations in one in 100 pregnancies, ten times more than normal, explained Rebecca Zash, a public health researcher at Harvard TH Chan School
Since May, there has been no further reported drama of this type, resulting in a total of four cases out of 596 pregnancies. But this remains " seven times higher than the other groups [de femmes enceintes] and statistically significant ," Dr. Zash estimated.
Dolutegravir is a relatively new anti-HIV treatment, with less than side effects that others, and the promoters believe it will generate less resistance in the long run.
Countries badisted by the US fund PEPFAR AIDS were about to make their main antiretroviral therapy, said President of the International AIDS Society (IAS), Linda-Gail Bekker
Evidence of expectations placed in him, the NGO Doctors Without Borders (MSF) on Tuesday called for better access to dolutegravir in its pediatric version for HIV-infected children
In anticipation of more definitive results, public health organizations will recommend that HIV-positive women with pregnancy plans prioritize other treatments. "It's hard but I think we have to wait ", commented Dr. Zash.
"Very complicated challenge"
A clinical trial to extract HIV from human cells and Eliminating Disappearing Results
Researchers have tested different treatments, in addition to antiretrovirals that should prevent HIV-positive people from becoming infected with AIDS, in 60 men.
These volunteers received vaccines teach the immune system to recognize HIV and drugs to force reservoirs to hide the virus in the hope that they will be attacked.
But the health status of these men has not changed differently of the others taking only conventional treatment, "said a researcher at Imperial College London, Sarah Fidler.
" Of course, the overall effect was not what we hoped for ", she said told reporters. " All results advance knowledge even if somewhat disappointing "
For researchers, curing people with HIV will mean reducing this AIDS-causing virus to a state where it will no longer harm the health of the carriers, who will do without treatment, and where it can no longer be transmitted.
" Healing remains one of the major scientific priorities ", recalled Sharon Lewin, a immunologist from the University of Melbourne (Australia). " What we have learned over the past decade is that it is going to be a very complicated challenge for science ."
Another source of concern: a study in Thailand concluded that a hormone for feminization after a bad-change operation appeared to lower the blood concentration of an antiretroviral drug, tenofovir.
Further investigation will have to determine whether this hormone makes this treatment less effective for HIV-negative take it in prevention, said a doctor of the AIDS research center of the Thai Red Cross, Akarin Hiransuthikul.
Good news came from France, however, with the confirmation of the total effectiveness in the prevention of HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP). Of the 1,435 volunteers recruited between May 2017 and May 2018 in the Paris region to take Truvada (emtricitabine / tenofovir), none was contaminated.
Created July 24, 2018
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