According to published today Elmundo. ART is the pill Truvada, which is used to prevent HIV infection among homosexual men is not as effective as initially thought. A few months ago a study published in the journal “The New England Journal of Medicine confirmed the effectiveness of it, but these days the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) have published a guide on which part of this total distrust effectiveness.

For this reason, from the CDC wanted to develop a guide for proper use of the pill geared for professionals who are thinking about giving this pill to patients. Without this guide, said from the agency “was concern sev produce unsafe practices or less effective in the coming months.” It is true that the treatment has a high cost-about $ 1,000 a month, and almost certainly the U.S. insurance will not cover, so for now looks set to be used by very few patients.

Two important factors have wanted to highlight from the CDC regarding the pill: first that should only be given to men who have sex with men and only in patients at high risk. This means that you must select which patients are very likely to take this pill and see very well the consequences. Its effects are not tested in other risk groups, then it must conform to the groups mentioned above. They also wanted to stress that it is not in any case a pill “morning after” and those making it have to take stringent controls from time to time of HIV.

This news comes from the U.S., but any news about HIV or AIDS is important to us in the sense that any progress will eventually reach our borders and it is advisable to be informed. Studies on the disease progress every day, and all we are keen to appear at last the miracle drug. Meanwhile we must accept the new formula with skepticism and to seek advice from the pros.

There are still some things that we know about HIV and AIDS.

For example, do not really know why it is that HIV and AIDS are both so common in some African countries but not in Europe or America, although we do have some theories.

Factors that may contribute include the much higher prevalence of sexually transmitted diseases not covered in Africa (which usually increases the likelihood of HIV transmission) and, quite possibly, differences in HIV subtypes.

Also, people who have a poorer general health (including those with malaria or tuberculosis) are more likely to have higher amounts of HIV in their body fluids, making them more likely to transmit the virus.

The concentration of an infectious disease in particular groups is not unusual. Hepatitis B is transmitted by many of the same ways that HIV and in Western countries has the same risk groups.

Hepatitis C (which is mainly transmitted via blood) is mainly confined to intravenous drug users, and the recent increases in syphilis cases (which is usually transmitted through sexual contact) have been spurred by outbreaks in groups of men who have sex with men.

Surveillance statistics from all across the Western world show that AIDS is becoming increasingly common outside the traditional risk groups, following similar trends in HIV cases.

In 2003, about a third of AIDS cases diagnosed in the United States, and two thirds of those in women occurred among persons not using drugs.138 heterosexual Epidemiological evidence for sexual transmission of HIV from male to female , man to man

.Another thing that is not fully understand how HIV causes AIDS. Again, however, we have some theories explain how the virus can cause the immune system to stop functioning properly in many ways and not only directly kill cells.

140 Ignorance about the precise way in which something happens is not evidence that does not happen.

Before we can start looking for a cause, we need first to clarify exactly what kind of disease we are talking about.

In early 1981, several physicians in New York and California began to report some strange new disease outbreaks.

In both places, previously healthy young men appeared with rare diseases including Kaposi’s sarcoma (a type of tumor) and PCP (a type of pneumonia), something hitherto unprecedented in this type of people.

Within months, dozens of similar cases were reported in 23 states across the U.S. and the UK, representing the beginning of a massive and unprecedented epidemic. 5

Doctors quickly discovered a distinctive feature of these cases. More than anything, these men lacked a particular type of white blood cells essential to a healthy immune system.

Normally, people have between 600 and 1500 “CD4 + T cells (also called helper T cells) in each cubic millimeter of blood. But men with the strange new disease typically had much lower levels. This immune deficiency is explained why they were so susceptible to disease.

The cases were clearly related in time and by population group (initially homosexual men and intravenous drug users). Could not find any cause of AIDS, but it was clear that was not inherited.

The researchers then grouped all these new and rare cases under the heading “Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome or AIDS.

The most recent definition of AIDS in the United States was founded in 1993. Under this definition, someone has AIDS if they have a 26 specific diseases (28 in children) but no known cause of immunodeficiency other than HIV (some diseases, it requires a positive HIV test), or if they have a number of T CD4 + minor 200 cells per cubic millimeter of blood, or less than 14% of total lymphocytes, plus an HIV test positive.9

The definition of AIDS usually requires a positive HIV test. This means that any connection between HIV and AIDS is artificially strengthened since any case of “AIDS without HIV” is discarded.

In other words, the definition and assumed that HIV causes AIDS and therefore can not be used to test this theory. However it is possible to redefine AIDS without reference to HIV or any other disease.