{"id":6880,"date":"2002-11-13T13:40:17","date_gmt":"2002-11-13T13:40:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/moomango.co.uk\/htb\/?p=6880"},"modified":"2014-06-03T17:48:27","modified_gmt":"2014-06-03T17:48:27","slug":"intestinal-worm-eradication-lowers-viral-load-in-hiv-positive-patients","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/htb\/6880","title":{"rendered":"Intestinal worm eradication lowers viral load in HIV-positive patients"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Eradication of intestinal worms in HIV-positive\u00a0patients living in Ethiopia leads to a decrease in viral load, according to a report in the 1 September issue of the Journal of AIDS.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>\u201cHelminthic infection affects a huge number of people in the world, and plays a very important role in making them more susceptible to HIV and tuberculosis and less able to mount a proper immune response. Thus, eradication of helminths may change the face of the AIDS and tuberculosis epidemics,\u201d said Dr Zvi Bentwich.<\/p>\n<p>Dr Bentwich, from Hebrew University Hadassah Medical School in Rehovot, Israel, and colleagues investigated whether treatment of helminthic infections would affect HIV disease progression in 56 otherwise asymptomatic HIV-positive\u00a0Ethiopian patients &#8211; for whom antiretroviral treatment is unavailable and in whom helminthic infections are common.<\/p>\n<p>Among the 31 patients with helminthic infections at baseline, there was a strong association between the helminthic load (as measured by the amount of eggs excreted in stools) and the HIV plasma viral load, the authors report.<\/p>\n<p>Antihelminthic treatment clearly reduced the proportion of helminth-infected patients and the helminthic load in patients infected at baseline. According to the report, the successful treatment of helminthic infection was associated with a significant decrease in HIV levels, while the group of patients whose helminthic infections were not eradicated experienced a significant increase in mean HIV load.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe decrease in HIV viral load, even of 0.35 logs only, is expected to have a very significant impact on the spread of the epidemic in the developing countries,\u201d Dr Bentwich commented.<\/p>\n<p>CD4+ T-lymphocyte counts did not change significantly during the course of the six-month study, the results indicate.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn the absence of antiretroviral therapy in Africa, and the serious problems of compliance to ART even if it was available, eradication of helminths is a very attractive, simple, cheap and feasible measure to curb HIV infection,\u201d Dr. Bentwich concluded.<\/p>\n<p>Reference:<\/p>\n<p>Wolday D, Mayaan S, Mariam ZG et al. Treatment of Intestinal Worms Is Associated With Decreased HIV Plasma Viral Load. J Acquir Immune Defic Syndr 2002 Sep 1;31(1):56-62<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/entrez\/query.fcgi?cmd=%20Retrieve&amp;db=PubMed&amp;list_uids=12352151\">http:\/\/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov:80\/entrez\/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&amp;db=PubMed&amp;list_uids=12352151<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Source: Reuters Health<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Eradication of intestinal worms in HIV-positive\u00a0patients living in Ethiopia leads to a decrease in viral load, according to a report in the 1 September issue of the Journal of AIDS. \u201cHelminthic infection affects a huge number of people in the &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6880","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opportunistic-infections-coinfections-and-complications"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/htb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6880","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/htb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/htb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/htb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/htb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6880"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/htb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6880\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/htb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6880"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/htb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6880"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/htb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6880"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}