Compilation of reports from virusmyth.com (JAN. '99) "The drugs we have are nowhere near as powerful as we once thought... Reports of treatment failure have ranged between 20 percent and 50 percent for more than a year now... If you don't die of a heart attack from the raised cholesterol and triglyceride levels caused by protease inhibitors, and if you aren't struck down by diabetes, you'll almost certainly be disfigured by lipodystrophy syndrome: a big stomach, a huge hump on your back, scrawny, skinny legs and arms." Read the POZ column by Stephen Gendin. (JAN. '01) "New U.S. guidelines suggest that powerful anti-viral drug combinations should be used later, rather than earlier, in treating AIDS... some AIDS treatment experts are now acknowledging that a part of the focus on early treatment may have been driven more by hype than solid science, and that the early use of drugs with powerful side effects caused years of suffering that could, and should, have been avoided." See this SF Weekly article, this article from Newsday, and this report from Reuters. The AIDS drug nevirapine has been shown to be "safe" as a treatment for pregnant mothers, but adult health-care workers risk potentially life-threatening side effects from the drug, US federal "health" officials have said. They gave a warning not to prescribe the drug to healthy health care workers stuck by needles anymore. See this report from Reuters, this AP article, and this one from the New York Times. Pregnant women face a higher risk of fatal side effects from another AIDS drug combination, the US government and Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. have warned. See this Reuters report, and this article from the AP. (FEB./MARCH '01) An article from abcnews.com, an article from AP, one from Reuters, and an article from the New York Times about the new treatment guidelines. Hit hard but later instead of hit hard and early. "Doctors throughout Europe are being warned of a potentially fatal side effect if pregnant women infected with HIV take Bristol-Myers Squibb's AIDS drugs Zerit (stavudine) and Videx (didanosine)." Read the Reuters report. "Spanish AIDS researchers said prolonged use of anti-AIDS cocktails, and not a single drug, probably caused patients to develop unusual fat deposits on the upper back." Read the Reuters report. "Cardiovascular disease risk factors are significantly increased in HIV-infected patients with lipodystrophy", see this Reuters report. "Often, the medicines fail to work this well... There are significantly greater numbers of patients who have failing regimens", says this article from AP. See also this article from USA Today End-stage liver disease has become the leading cause of death of patients treated with HAART. Read the Reuters report. Patients did not report a quality of life improvement after HAART, another new study found out. See this item from AIDS Weekly. "Less than half of adolescents with HIV are taking their medications as required," reports Reuters. An article about 'drug holidays' from The Washington Post. See also this article by Dr. Jay Levi from the San Francisco Chronicle. (MAY '01) A new meta study has found antiretroviral therapy to be associated with a high rate of severe liver toxicity, regardless of drug class or combination. See this Reuters report. (JULY '01) "A controversial treatment in which patients infected with the virus that causes AIDS are allowed to only take medications on alternate weeks appears to hold the deadly virus at bay -- and after a year has not resulted in the creation of a drug resistant virus." Read the UPI article. See also this AP article about two more studies questioning basic principles upon which AIDS therapy is based, and this release from Reuters. "HIV-infected men with abnormal body fat distribution, a side effect of treatment with antiretroviral drugs, face another risk: thinning of the bones." See this Reuters report. (OCT. '01) "As many as two-thirds of patients on HIV drug combinations may suffer a medication side effect that could affect their adherence to therapy, new study results suggest." Read this Reuters report for more. "The longer HIV-infected patients are on the drug regimen called highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART), the more likely they are to develop abnormalities in fat distribution, according to researchers in France." See this Reuters report. "Only about half of HIV-infected patients in a study published were found to be taking their antiretroviral drugs according to directions", another Reuters report says. (DEC. '01) "Symptom-free HIV patients can safely hold off taking AIDS drugs longer than previously thought, two new studies suggest." See this AP report, and this article from The Globe and Mail. "Letting patients with HIV take their medicines on a one-week-on, one-week-off schedule might save some money and might help reduce side-effects," says this Reuters report. "A disturbing new study found that at least half of all Americans under care for HIV infection carry viruses that are resistant to some of the standard AIDS drugs." See this AP release, and this article from the Boston Globe. "HIV-infected women who take certain combinations of medications in their first trimester of pregnancy may increase the risk of having a child with birth defects, a small study suggests." See this Reuters article. (FEB./MARCH '02) "With current therapies bedeviled by serious side effects and growing viral resistance, hopes are fading for a quick breakthrough." See this article from the Los Angeles Times. "A class of anti-HIV drugs called nucleoside analogues, which include medications like AZT, can interfere with the ability of mitochondria to produce energy." Researchers have developed a new test to measure the mitochondrial toxicity. See this Reuters release. "All the currently available drugs are losing their impact." See this article from AP. "Strokes and coronary disease are linked to powerful protease inhibitors, some doctors suspect." Read this article from the Los Angeles Times. "Scientists in the US have confirmed that children born to HIV positive mothers, exposed to treatment in the womb have an increased frequency of genetic mutations." See this article from the BBC. "Therapy may also have an unexpected side effect: increasing the risk of febrile seizures in early childhood." See this article from Reuters. "The Bristol-Myers Squibb Company has warned doctors that some patients who took its HIV, drug Zerit developed a rare nerve inflammation that caused some deaths." See this report from Bloomberg People on protease inhibitors were much more likely to die 3 to 4 years after starting "antiretroviral" drugs than people started on drug regimens that did not contain protease inhibitors. Read this article by Mattew Irwin, MD. "Median time from seroconversion to AIDS and death in poor, starving rural Africans without access to health care, purified water or electricity is no different than that observed in Europeans, North Americans, or Australians who have full access to proper nutrition, health-care, "live-prolonging" antiretrovirals, and prophylaxis against opportunistic infections." Read this article by Rodney Richards.
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