| National News | International News  | East Asian Students Less Sexually Active but Sexually Risky, UBC Study Shows VANCOUVER, CANADA :: HIV/AIDS,STDs
Vancouver Sun (07.17.2013) :: By Zoe McKnight | | | A new study by the University of British Columbia (BC) School of Nursing found that language barriers might be putting the sexual health of some new Canadians at risk. According to Yuko Homma, a post-doctoral fellow and the study’s lead author, East Asian high school students in this province were less likely to be sexually active, but those who were active engaged in riskier sexual behavior. Study authors suggested that language and cultural barriers might be preventing parents from speaking frankly with their children about sex.
“In BC, there is a growing population of East Asians, particularly Chinese and Koreans. East Asian student health impacts general Canadian health,” said Homma. She would like to see more culturally appropriate sex education taught in both English and the students’ first language. The province’s Ministry of Education mandates sex education as part of its health and career education curriculum.
While research indicated that sexual activity had become more common among North American adolescents, only 10 percent of East Asian adolescents in BC reported having sexual intercourse. However, seven out of 10 sexually active East Asian youth reported high-risk behavior, according to the study. The report used 2008 data from the provincial Adolescent Health Survey and responses from nearly 30,000 students in grades 7–10 from China, Korea, and Japan. The majority of these students are first-generation immigrants. More than half of respondents spoke their native language at home, which researchers noted might indicate closer ties to more traditionally conservative cultures. “I hate to make generalizations,” said Kristen Gilbert, a senior educator at Options for Sexual Health agency, “but it’s common for me to have Asian students in the class who are surprised by the information, even basic reproductive biology.”
According to Saleema Noon, an independent Vancouver-based sex educator, “I think it comes down to religion and culture ... Most of us didn’t learn much from our own parents, and we live in a culture that’s so much more sexually open than Asia.” She continued that, in an “ideal world,” schools would translate educational material into several languages and send it home to parents as well. Sex remained a taboo topic for many families, but Noon noted that attitudes were slowly changing.
The full study, “Sexual Health and Risk Behavior Among East Asian Adolescents in British Columbia,” was published online in the Canadian Journal of Human Sexuality (2013; doi:10.3138/cjhs.927). |  Read Full Article | Share this Article     | | Back to Top  |  | | Medical News  | Mold Toxins Tied to AIDS Epidemic GHANA; UNITED STATES :: HIV/AIDS
New York Times (07.22.2013) :: By Donald G. McNeil Jr. | | | A new study from researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and colleagues has examined the impact of aflatoxins on the AIDS epidemic in Africa. Aflatoxins are poisons produced by aspergillus fungi that can be found on damp grains, nuts, and beans, usually in hot humid climates. Federal law limits the allowable amount of these highly dangerous toxins in food to 20 parts per billion. High doses of aflatoxins can be deadly; exposure even to low doses could cause liver cancer. Aflatoxins also have been found to be immunosuppressive, possibly causing increased immunosuppression in HIV-positive individuals.
Because African countries rely heavily on several crops that develop aspergillus, researchers investigated the association between aflatoxins and HIV. They measured the blood levels of aflatoxins and the disease in 314 HIV-positive Ghanaians who had never been on antiretroviral therapy. Results showed that higher aflotoxin levels in participants’ blood often coincided with higher HIV blood levels, even for individuals with high levels of CD4 blood cells. These participants with high CD4 blood cells had not been infected long and were not eligible to begin antiretroviral therapy, under World Health Organization guidelines. Researchers believed that aflatoxins either produced proteins that contributed to HIV reproduction or reduced the number of white blood cells in some way, making the virus’s attack on the immune system more powerful.
The full report, “Association Between High Aflatoxin B1 Levels and High Viral Load in HIV-Positive People,” was published online in the World Mycotoxin Journal (2013; doi 10.3920/WMJ2013.1585). | | Read Full Article | Share this Article | | Back to Top | | | Local and Community News  | At Least 1,400 Students, Staff at Lee High Should Get TB Tests, Health Officials Say VIRGINIA :: TB
Washington Post (07.22.2013) :: By T. Reese Shapiro | | | Fairfax County, Va., public health officials will offer free TB screening beginning August 3 to all 1,400 faculty, staff, and students of Lee High School, in response to public concern regarding recently diagnosed TB cases. Last spring, three Lee High students tested positive for active TB. In June, the Fairfax County Health Department asked 400 students and 30 staff members who had been in close contact with the TB-infected students to undergo TB testing. Approximately one week later, the health department expanded testing to 60 additional possible contacts from other Fairfax County schools. The screening identified an undisclosed number of additional latent TB cases—a noncontagious form of the bacterial infection—that could progress to active TB if left untreated. The department has tested close to 300 people since the outbreak.
Typically, approximately 1 percent of US-born residents would test positive for latent TB; approximately 5 percent of the recently tested US-born Lee High group received a positive test result, according to Fairfax County Health Director Gloria Addo-Ayensu. Spokesperson Glen Barbour stated that incidence among the foreign-born Lee High group tested for TB was comparable to the worldwide TB rate, which ranged from 5 to 33 percent. Jane Moore, director of TB control and prevention for the Virginia Department of Health, reported that Virginia health departments investigate 5–10 TB cases in schools annually. One-third of Virginia’s TB cases in 2012 occurred in Fairfax County. Northern Virginia, home to a diverse immigrant population and many US residents who work internationally, accounted for more than half of all Virginia TB cases.
The Fairfax County Health Department scheduled the August 3 testing for all Lee High students, staff, and faculty to alleviate community concern and to identify all TB cases before school reconvened on September 3.
| | Read Full Article | Share this Article | | Back to Top | | | | | | News Briefs | | | | | OraSure Founders Reunite for New Project PENNSYLVANIA :: HIV/AIDS,TB
Morning Call (Allentown, PA) (07.18.2013) :: By Sam Kennedy | | | Two founders of Bethlehem, Pa.-based OraSure Technologies, maker of the OraQuick HIV test, will work together to create a TB test. In 1988, Sam Niedbala and Mike Gausling partnered with two other friends to form what would become OraSure. Niedbala's new company, TB Biosciences, recently announced it received $1.5 million from a group of investors led by Originate Ventures, the venture capital fund co-founded by Gausling. TB Biosciences is working on a means of diagnosing the disease using antibodies found in the blood of patients with active TB. Niedbala believes that developing an improved TB test is part of the larger fight against HIV because so many HIV-positive individuals actually died of TB. According to TB Biosciences, preliminary trials indicated a 90-percent accuracy rate for the company’s technology, which the New York University (NYU) School of Medicine has developed throughout the past two decades. "This would be a major breakthrough in tuberculosis testing and could go a long way to saving many lives each year," said Frank Rimalovski, executive director of the NYU Innovation Venture Fund. | | Read Full Article | Share this Article | | Back to Top | | | |
7/23/2013
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