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HIV meds and COVID


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So I'm not sure if this is the best place to start this topic. There's a retrospective study on HIV positive men in which it was found that the COVID virus is not impacting those on antiviral therapy, including PrEP, as it is the general population.  Additionally, a coworker that was out with COVID received a call from the county health department that was following up with her regarding her COVID journey. The health dept worker told my coworker that they also worked in an HIV clinic, and said they were seeing some similarities on COVID/HIV. 

Anyone else hear much about this?

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9 hours ago, bbinbpark said:

So I'm not sure if this is the best place to start this topic. There's a retrospective study on HIV positive men in which it was found that the COVID virus is not impacting those on antiviral therapy, including PrEP, as it is the general population.  Additionally, a coworker that was out with COVID received a call from the county health department that was following up with her regarding her COVID journey. The health dept worker told my coworker that they also worked in an HIV clinic, and said they were seeing some similarities on COVID/HIV. 

Anyone else hear much about this?

Link to study

This sounds interesting, but the link didn't insert correctly. Could you post it again, please?

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9 hours ago, bbinbpark said:

So I'm not sure if this is the best place to start this topic. There's a retrospective study on HIV positive men in which it was found that the COVID virus is not impacting those on antiviral therapy, including PrEP, as it is the general population.  Additionally, a coworker that was out with COVID received a call from the county health department that was following up with her regarding her COVID journey. The health dept worker told my coworker that they also worked in an HIV clinic, and said they were seeing some similarities on COVID/HIV. 

Anyone else hear much about this?

Link to study

Interesting isn't it !! 

It just may be a coincidence, but one of the meds that has been prescribed along with the Hydroxychloroquine cocktail treatment for COVID, just happens to be Emtricitabine or one of it's derivatives, and is also one of the ingredients used in TRUVADA / TENVIR-EM  PrEP.

If you will do some research, the COVID virus attacks the cells and attaches to the DNA very much the same as HIV does, The biggest difference being that of the delivery method into the hosts system.

Stop and do some serious thinking about this and see what conclusions many will come up with !!

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I've seen a couple articles siting anecdotal evidence that HIV positive individuals aren't showing up in hospitals in numbers that were expected. There are several possible explanations why that is occurring. It could be that the meds provide protection. It could be that having a depressed immune system, or even the HIV virus itself, buffers the effect of CoVid so that extreme symptoms don't occur. It's also  possible that HIV+ individuals are more aware of risk mitigation and simply do a better job at avoiding catching Covid. Unfortunately, as far as I know, there hasn't been a comprehensive study to determine to what extent any or all of those possibilities play a role. There is that Spanish study, however it only looked at people who are HIV+ on meds. In order to determine the relationship between CoVid, HIV, and ARV medication, there would need to be a comparison between four groups: HIV-, HIV- on PREP, HIV+, and HIV+ on ARV. By comparing poz to neg, and on meds to off, you'd be able to determine whether there is a lower incidence of infection or better outcome in any group and form hypotheses as to its cause.  From what's been shown so far, the best that can be said is that having HIV (at least if you are on meds) is not an additional risk factor. Med do not prevent you from getting CoVid, but having HIV does not make your chances of getting it worse.

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36 minutes ago, funpozbottom said:

I've seen a couple articles siting anecdotal evidence that HIV positive individuals aren't showing up in hospitals in numbers that were expected. There are several possible explanations why that is occurring. It could be that the meds provide protection. It could be that having a depressed immune system, or even the HIV virus itself, buffers the effect of CoVid so that extreme symptoms don't occur. It's also  possible that HIV+ individuals are more aware of risk mitigation and simply do a better job at avoiding catching Covid. Unfortunately, as far as I know, there hasn't been a comprehensive study to determine to what extent any or all of those possibilities play a role. There is that Spanish study, however it only looked at people who are HIV+ on meds. In order to determine the relationship between CoVid, HIV, and ARV medication, there would need to be a comparison between four groups: HIV-, HIV- on PREP, HIV+, and HIV+ on ARV. By comparing poz to neg, and on meds to off, you'd be able to determine whether there is a lower incidence of infection or better outcome in any group and form hypotheses as to its cause.  From what's been shown so far, the best that can be said is that having HIV (at least if you are on meds) is not an additional risk factor. Med do not prevent you from getting CoVid, but having HIV does not make your chances of getting it worse.

Very well stated.

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