| National News | International News  | "Sputnik" Orbits a Russian City, Finding and Healing Tuberculosis RUSSIA :: TB
NPR Berlin (07.11.2013) :: By Corey Flintoff | | | Russia’s Health Ministry and the US nonprofit organization Partners in Health launched an innovative mobile clinic, “Sputnik,” that “orbited” the city of Tomsk to find TB patients and deliver their medicines. The strategy aimed to combat an increase in the incidence of multidrug-resistant TB in Tomsk. The World Health Organization reported in 2012 that nearly 30 percent of TB cases in Siberia were resistant to two of the most powerful TB medications.
One Sputnik team included a nurse and a driver/bodyguard who drove the nurse around Tomsk to meet with patients who were sometimes dangerous. Sputnik’s primary targets—the homeless, mentally ill, and drug addicts—could be difficult to find and uncooperative; most either could not or would not go to the hospital for treatment. For example, one female TB patient preferred to meet daily with the Sputnik crew and take her TB regimen in the back seat of the Sputnik car than be in the TB hospital with “drunks, dope addicts, ex-cons, crooks.” The Sputnik crew visited another patient, an alcoholic man, twice daily at his home.
The drug regimen for multidrug-resistant TB could require a patient to take as many as 18 pills daily to combat both the TB and side effects of the TB drugs. If patients refused to complete the long course of medicine necessary for the cure, the TB bacteria could rebound and become resistant to TB medications.
Dr. Alexander Barnashov, a Tomsk Health Department head physician, stated that the city had other TB strategies, but the Sputnik program had been effective in reducing the most dangerous forms of TB, and other cities were adopting the Sputnik model. However, a new Russian law that required nonprofits receiving funds from sources outside Russia to register as “foreign agents” could threaten Sputnik. Designation as a foreign agent has been equivalent to the label “spy,” and Russian authorities have raided many charities and demanded their records. Thus far, authorities have not challenged Sputnik.
|  Read Full Article | Share this Article     | | Back to Top  |  | | Medical News  | HIV Could Be Worsened by Harmful Bacteria, Like E. coli, In Digestive Tracts UNITED STATES :: HIV/AIDS
Medical Daily (07.10.2013) :: By Anoopa Singh | | | A new study showed that HIV-infected individuals had very high levels of harmful bacteria in their digestive systems that could make their lack of immunity even worse. The researchers believed that the bacteria might directly weaken the digestive system’s barriers and specific immunity.
Researchers studied 32 men, including nine without HIV infection and 23 with HIV infection. They found that the bacteria in the digestive tracts of HIV-infected individuals differed from the bacteria found in digestive tracts of HIV-uninfected persons. The HIV-infected participants had unusually high levels of salmonella, escherichia, shigella, and staphylococcus bacteria in their digestive tracts. These bacteria cause food poisoning that would not be serious for a person with an intact immune system, but in HIV-positive persons, the symptoms of food poisoning—fever, diarrhea, abdominal pain, and dehydration—persist, causing the body to waste away from the infection.
The researchers suggested that high levels of harmful bacteria in the digestive tract were part of the way HIV attacked the patient’s immune system to make it useless. The existence of a large amount of bacteria in the body would trigger the body’s initial immune response, called inflammation, and summon other immune cells to the infection site to kill the invading bacteria. HIV multiplies by entering immune response cells that would normally stop an infection and destroying them. The inflammation then continues in the body, making it vulnerable to even more infections. Since the researchers have identified high levels of harmful bacteria in HIV-infected patients, clinicians treating HIV-infected individuals can pay attention to symptoms of infection from these bacteria.
The full report, “Dysbiosis of the Gut Microbiota Is Associated with HIV Disease Progression and Tryptophan Catabolism,” was published online in the journal Science Translational Medicine (2013; doi:10.1126/scitranslmed.3006438). | | Read Full Article | Share this Article | | Back to Top | | | Local and Community News  | Cost of Grand Fork's TB Fight Rises NORTH DAKOTA :: TB
Grand Forks Herald (07.09.2013) :: By Brandi Jewett | | | City health officials in Grand Forks, N.D., are still in the process of managing and computing the cost of a 2012 TB outbreak. The city experienced 26 TB cases and has tested more than 1,500 individuals since October 2012, when officials detected the first case at an elementary school. Testing continues and, according to Public Health Director Don Shields, officials expect to diagnose more cases as the department tracks down more contacts of infected individuals.
Meanwhile, the costs of managing the outbreak continue to increase. The Grand Forks City Council is reviewing a budget amendment to add approximately $40,000 to the health department’s budget. This is a reimbursement from the state Department of Health to cover part of the city’s cost of managing infected patients and testing others. This is the state’s second reimbursement to the city and brings the total amount the city has received to approximately $80,000. Approximately half of the reimbursement will pay salaries, as there is a huge labor cost in making sure that patients adhere to treatment. At present, Shield’s staff is monitoring 23 patients by means of daily visits to ensure they are taking their medication.
Part of the problem with the outbreak is that many people who contract TB are low-income or homeless. Also, the nomadic lifestyle of the patients before they were diagnosed impedes the process of tracking others who may have been in contact with them. Officials have placed 10 of the patients with active TB in subsidized housing with food delivery so that the department could keep them in quarantine and minimize the spread of TB. | | Read Full Article | Share this Article | | Back to Top | | | | News Briefs | | | Number of People Infected with AIDS Via Sex Increases in Iran IRAN :: HIV/AIDS
Trend Azerbaijan (07.10.2013) :: By T. Jafarov | | | On July 10, Iranian Labour and Social Security Ministry Official Hassan Mousavi said the annual percentage of reported AIDS infections acquired through sex rose from 12 percent during the years 1986–2011 to 33 percent for the years 2011–2012, which was cause for concern in the country. Additionally, he said that 50 percent of infected individuals were ages 25–36. According to research from the Iranian Committee to Combat AIDS, 100,000 AIDS virus carriers lived in Iran but only 27,000 were registered, leaving approximately 75,000 unaware of their disease. Information about HIV/AIDS is unavailable in Iran for religious reasons, so individuals are uninformed about virus transmission, leading to an increase in infections. | | Read Full Article | Share this Article | | Back to Top | | | | | Ride for AIDS Chicago Celebrates 10 Years ILLINOIS :: HIV/AIDS
Windy City Times (Chicago) (07.09.2013) :: By Ross Forman | | | The Test Positive Aware Network’s (TPAN’s) annual 200-mile bicycle ride will celebrate its 10th anniversary on July 13–14, with more than 300 registered riders participating in the event. The riders will begin after the opening ceremony at the Chandler-Newberger Center on Northwestern University’s campus in Evanston, Ill. The closing ceremony will be held from 4:00 to 6:00 p.m. on Sunday, July 14, at Ingraham Park. According to Richard Cordova, TPAN’s director of athletic events, the ride already has raised $560,000, which is much more than the same time last year, and he is confident that this year’s ride will exceed last year’s total of $638,000. The Ride for AIDS Chicago grew out of the defunct Minneapolis to Chicago AIDS Ride. So far, the top fundraising team this year is Team Chicago Urban Riders. | | Read Full Article | Share this Article | | Back to Top | | | |
7/11/2013
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