ARVs Better Than Condoms, Immune Therapies & Therapeutic Vaccines

[rawTOP]

The Huffington Post has some comments on the recent HIV/AIDS conference...

...where one partner is HIV+ and the other is not, ARV use by the partner with HIV/AIDS appears to offer better protection to the partner who does not have HIV than condoms

The upside of this is that when someone gives you a hard time about barebacking with neg guys tell them that it's safer than not being on meds and fucking with a condom. (Of course, on meds plus a condom will be safer still), but it does call into question the criminalization of poz guys who bareback. If they're on meds they're practicing safe sex even when they bareback (since the criteria for 'safe' is condom use).

I've been saying for a while that poz guys will be pushed into taking meds earlier than they personally need them in an effort to protect others. News like this, while excellent, will only make that particular issue more of a problem.

...activists and community groups highlighted another direction for treatment progress--- immune-based therapies. Unlike ARVs, which directly attack the virus, immune-based therapies variously bolster the patient's own immune system to fight HIV. The leading candidates, known as a therapeutic vaccines---or vaccines designed to boost the immune systems of people who already have an illness----would perhaps be given once or twice a year, a regimen that markedly lowers costs from the lifelong daily regimen of ARVs, while making treatment easier and feasible for millions more people.

This is interesting in contrast to the last thing I mentioned - basically ways to stay off meds and delay needing to go on them. Or perhaps a way for poz guys to go on extended drug holidays - go off, and stay off for a while. But I wonder if this treatment won't be pushed to the side in an effort to get all poz guys on meds to protect neg guys...

Most important, two therapeutic vaccines also presented have reached the critical point of being evaluated in larger clinical trials ... One is Vacc-4x, a peptide-based vaccine made by Bionor Pharma, a Norwegian company. In a trial concluded two years ago with 40 patients, the vaccine suppressed HIV for an average of 31 months---and, in a few patients, for up to seven years.

That's pretty amazing... So instead of vaccinating neg guys, that's a "vaccine" for poz guys that does at least part of the work of ARVs - and suppresses HIV for long periods of time...

All in all very good news on the treatment front...

[PhoenixGeoff]

On the topic of criminalization of HIV, it's interesting to note that the Obama administration has called for state legislatures to repeal laws singling out people with HIV. This includes a wide range of behaviors (depending on your state):

• Prostitution with HIV (even if your status is disclosed)
  
• Non-disclosure of HIV status
  
• Assault involving bodily fluids, like spit (often limited to law enforcement as the victim)
  

I'll also note that many state health departments will track people who contract a wide variety of sexually transmitted diseases in the interests of public health, something they don't tend to do with far more deadly diseases like the flu. Yup, showing up to work with the flu is a lot more likely to kill someone than barebacking in a bathhouse when you have HIV (let alone other STDs that are almost entirely treatable with proper medical care), once you factor in transmissability and mortality rates.

[Tightslider]

The only downside in the research to date is the use of ARVs causing resistant HIV strains as well as making it next to impossible to treat the patient who used the ARVs later on. They have made much progress over the past two years however.