Health problems

Health problems features

• Geriatric HIV: living with multiple medical conditions will become the norm as population ages

  In fifteen years' time, the clinical needs of Dutch people living with HIV will have changed substantially due to three quarters of them being over the...

  From:  News

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  Multi-disease prevention campaigns (part 2): case studies from Kenya and Uganda

  Following on from the previous edition, this article examines in more detail two campaign approaches to multi-disease prevention that included HIV....

  From:  HIV & AIDS treatment in practice

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  Multi-disease prevention campaigns (part 1): integrating HIV into wider public health campaigns

  This edition examines the concept of multi-disease prevention campaigns targeting a range of public health issues in a concentrated burst of activity in a locality....

  From:  HIV & AIDS treatment in practice

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  A healthy – and happy – old age with HIV

  At least one-in-five people with HIV in the UK is now over 50.1 Gus Cairns asks: What’s the recipe for staying fit and happy as we age? ...

  From:  HIV treatment update

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  Efavirenz and the brain: are we nearer to solving a mysterious side-effect?

  One of the most potent HIV drugs, efavirenz, unfortunately also causes mysterious and sometimes chronic disruptions of mood, thought and sleep. Researchers may have found the key to...

  From:  HIV treatment update

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  HIV and TB in Practice for nurses: cotrimoxazole prophylaxis

  Cotrimoxazole prophylaxis is the use of a common antiobiotic to prevent a range of infections that commonly affect people living with HIV. ...

  From:  HIV & AIDS treatment in practice

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  HIV and TB in Practice for nurses: non-communicable diseases, HIV and TB

  Conditions such as cancer, heart disease and diabetes in low- and middle-income countries, and awareness of these conditions in people living with HIV and/or TB. ...

  From:  HIV & AIDS treatment in practice

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  ART and TB prevention

  This edition explores what is known about the potential benefits and limits of antiretroviral therapy (ART) for TB prevention and control....

  From:  HIV & AIDS treatment in practice

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  Growing pain

  As people with HIV live longer, they are facing pains old and new. David McLay reports on peripheral neuropathy and arthritis....

  From:  HIV treatment update

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  Breathtaking mortality: bacterial pneumonia and HIV

  Ever stopped to think about the top reason people with HIV end up in intensive care? Heart attack? Liver problems? Accidents? No, pneumonia. David McLay investigates an...

  From:  HIV treatment update

Health problems in your own words

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  Diagnosed far from home

  I still remember the very cold January morning; I was not listening to the pre-counselling, I thought it did not concern me. I just...

  From: In your own words

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  Peripheral neuropathy – the sting in the tail

  To begin: It is estimated that between 30% and 40% of HIV patients will develop neuropathy. In the United States alone, there are 20 million sufferers (from...

  From: In your own words

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  Going into hospital

  My experiences of hospitalisation are mixed. I’ve been admitted twice in the last six months, both times for a minor operation. However, following the excellent...

  From: In your own words

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  Surving non-Hodgkin's lymphoma

  I was diagnosed with HIV in July 1997, aged 36 and was told I would not need HIV treatment for some years and that I...

  From: In your own words

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  Headaches

  In October 2000 I arrived in the UK from Zimbabwe. I went to live in Bristol with my then partner. Things went okay, and I...

  From: In your own words

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  TB - my experiences

  This might sound odd, but I was really shocked when I became seriously ill because of HIV. I was even more shocked when it turned...

  From: In your own words

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  Living with HIV and hep C co-infection and haemophilia

  For most people, coping with HIV is enough of a problem in itself, but when you throw in a lifetime disorder such as haemophilia, and...

  From: In your own words

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  The luxury of hypochondriacs

  That anxious look I get from loved ones is very hard to take, and all I want to do is reassure them that everything will...

  From: In your own words

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  The bus of doom

  I've recently read the His Dark Materials trilogy by Philip Pullman (which, if you haven't already read, I highly recommend). In this theological novel disguised...

  From: In your own words

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  Seroconversion

  I was given my diagnosis over the telephone after spending four days in hospital with meningitis. I now realise it wasn’t meningitis, it was an...

  From: In your own words

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  HIV support in Manchester

  I was diagnosed HIV-positive in the 1990s. My husband had been ill for the previous 18 months, but not with anything they could put a...

  From: In your own words

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  Finding support

  I found out I had HIV in June 2005. My world just fell apart. I didn’t know that I needed an HIV test, but the...

  From: In your own words

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  Finally undetectable!

  After almost 15 years of HIV, and six years of viral load testing, I heard on Thursday, June 21st 2001 that my viral load had...

  From: In your own words

Health problems news from aidsmap

• One in five Americans living with HIV experience severe anxiety on an almost daily basis

  A fifth of HIV-positive adults in the United States regularly experience symptoms of anxiety, according to research published in AIDS. Individuals with symptoms of generalised anxiety disorder (GAD) had poor engagement with the HIV care continuum, and also had high ...

  04 July 2019 | Michael Carter

• US study suggests that ageing people with HIV may have an increased risk of arthritis

  HIV infection and antiretroviral therapy are associated with increased risk of cartilage damage in the knee associated with osteoarthritis, according to the results of a small US study published in BMC Musculoskeletal Disorders. The case-controlled study showed a higher prevalence of ...

  16 May 2019 | Michael Carter

• Decline in chemsex over time in three English clinics

  In the first study to track chemsex over time, the number of men having chemsex fell by two-thirds between 2015 and 2018, Janey Sewell and colleagues at University College London report in the June issue of the ...

  09 May 2019 | Roger Pebody

• Anal cancer treatment less effective and more likely to cause side-effects in people with HIV

  Localised chemo-radiation therapy for anal cancer has poorer outcomes and is more likely to cause side-effects in people with HIV, according to the results of a meta-analysis published in the Journal of Gastrointestinal Oncology. HIV-positive individuals were about a third ...

  30 April 2019 | Michael Carter

• Fatty liver disease a rising cause of liver problems in people with HIV

  Now that hepatitis C can be successfully treated, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is becoming an increasingly important cause of serious liver problems and liver-related death among people living with HIV in the US, according to a report at the ...

  24 April 2019 | Liz Highleyman

• Clusters of co-morbidities in people living with HIV show major non-HIV medical needs

  Most health problems in people living with HIV in two large cohorts can be classified in six clusters, with cardiovascular disease, metabolic problems, sexually transmitted infections and mental health conditions being the most common in Britain, Ireland and the ...

  05 April 2019 | Keith Alcorn

• Diet and exercise advice lowers diabetes risk in people with HIV

  Rates of diabetes are higher in people living with HIV than in the general population, but individualised lifestyle advice from a dietitian led to clinically and statistically significant reductions in glucose, weight and other risk factors in a small, ...

  26 March 2019 | Roger Pebody

• Specialist memory clinic in Brighton shows that HIV-associated cognitive disorder is being over-diagnosed

  Cognitive impairment in people with HIV has multiple causes and HIV-associated neurocognitive disorder is being over-diagnosed, clinicians from Brighton report in Brain Sciences. Assessment of patients attending a specialist HIV memory clinic showed that only 31% met the criteria for HIV-associated ...

  27 February 2019 | Michael Carter

• Smoking, cholesterol, blood pressure are more important causes of disease than HIV in people living with HIV

  Preventing smoking, lowering cholesterol, controlling blood pressure and curing hepatitis C would greatly reduce the burden of heart attacks, non-AIDS cancers and end-stage liver disease and kidney disease in people living with HIV, according to an analysis of a large ...

  11 February 2019 | Keith Alcorn

• HIV infection an independent risk factor for poorer survival from liver cancer

  Infection with HIV is associated with significantly worse survival for people with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC, the most common type of primary liver cancer), according to findings from a large international cohort study published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. As none ...

  01 February 2019 | Michael Carter

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Health problems news selected from other sources

• HIV May Persist in the Brain Despite Antiretroviral Treatment

  After almost a decade on antiretroviral therapy, half of study participants still had HIV in immune cells in their brain and spinal fluid.

  17 July 2019 | Poz

• As HIV patients live longer, heart disease might be their next challenge

  As people with HIV live longer, they also find themselves at higher risk for heart attack, stroke and other types of cardiovascular disease. A new American Heart Association report hopes to raise awareness about that connection, along with pointing out cardiovascular disease prevention and treatment strategies for an emerging population with unique concerns researchers have only begun to explore.

  04 June 2019 | American Heart Association

• Study uncovers why bisexual Australians suffer poorer mental health

  The world’s largest study of bisexual people to date, led by La Trobe University in Melbourne, has examined why bisexual Australians experience higher rates of psychological distress than their heterosexual and homosexual peers.

  23 April 2019 | Q News

• Hepatic Steatosis Highly Prevalent in Young Adults With Lifelong HIV

  One-third of young adults living with HIV since birth or early childhood have hepatic steatosis.

  17 April 2019 | Infectious Disease Advisor

• Combination therapy more effective in treating patients with leishmaniasis and HIV

  The results of clinical trials conducted in Ethiopia by the Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative (DNDi), in partnership with Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), the University of Gondar, and Addis Ababa University, open the way for more effective and safer treatments for people with both HIV and visceral leishmaniasis (VL), a group of patients who have historically suffered from poor treatment options. The results were published today in PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases.

  18 January 2019 | Eurekalert Medicine & Health

• ‘Left behind’: Drug companies and researchers have overlooked patients who don’t respond to HIV meds

  There are tens of thousands of immunologic non-responders in the U.S., whose low CD4 numbers put them at much higher risk of heart attacks, stroke, cancers, secondary infections such as tuberculosis, and death. And yet, drug companies and researchers aren’t actively pursuing new treatments that would boost their immunity.

  08 January 2019 | STAT

• Unpacking pain: what causes it and why it’s hard to measure

  Pain is difficult to measure. Unlike using a thermometer to measure body temperature, a blood test to measure blood glucose, or a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan to detect a tumour, there are no instruments or tests that objectively measure pain. To understand why, one needs to understand what pain is.

  17 December 2018 | The Conversation

• Chronic Pain Is a Huge, Underrecognized Problem for People With HIV

  Living with chronic pain not only drags down quality of life, but it is also linked to poorer HIV-related health outcomes.

  12 October 2018 | Poz

• Psychosocial Factors Associated With Persistent Pain in HIV

  A meta-analysis and literature review, published in Pain, found moderate evidence supporting an association between pain outcomes in people with HIV and several psychosocial factors, such as depression, psychologic distress, post-traumatic stress, drug abuse, sleep disturbance, reduced antiretroviral therapy adherence, healthcare use, missed HIV clinic visits, unemployment, and protective psychologic factors.

  26 September 2018 | Infectious Disease Advisor

• Physical Activity Associated With Cognitive Benefits in Women Living With HIV

  Physical activity may protect against cognitive impairment in women living with HIV, according to a recent study published in the Journal of Infectious Disease.

  20 September 2018 | Infectious Disease Advisor

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