MERGED: HIV in the Philippines

[jetfreak2000]

---

TAIPEI, Taiwan — Physicians at a hospital in Taiwan that mistakenly transplanted four patients with HIV-infected organs may face criminal prosecution, an official said Friday.

The doctors involved may face up to 10 years in prison if found to have caused patients to contract the HIV virus by negligence, Taipei Prosecutors' Office spokesman Lin Wen-teh said.

Last week, Taipei's National Taiwan University Hospital performed the transplants of the liver, lungs and two kidneys from a donor it mistakenly believed was HIV negative. Another facility, National Chengkung University Hospital, transplanted the heart into a patient there based on NTUH's information.

NTUH, one of Taiwan's best medical institutions, said a staffer misheard the donor's test results as "non-reactive" when the English word "reactive" was actually given, meaning the donor had HIV. The information was given by telephone, and the hospital admitted the donor's HIV status was not double-checked as standard procedure required.

The head of the university hospital's transplant department, Ke Wen-che, resigned Thursday to take responsibility for the blunder. He said he was responsible for the transplant program in its entirety, and declined to blame either the staffer who mishandled the HIV information, or other physicians directly involved in the transplant procedures.

Meanwhile, the Health Department is also looking into the mistake.

But department official Shih Chung-liang says it would be improper to put all the blame on the staffer who mishandled the HIV test results.

Still, he said, if negligence is found to have caused the blunder, NTUH may have to suspend its transplant programs for up to a year in addition to paying unspecified fines.

NTUH has not disclosed if the organ recipients have tested positive for HIV. But health experts say it's likely they will be infected and it will complicate their treatment.

[eclipse182]

asa source ani? paytera pd ana nila oi tsk tsk tsk

[niehrx]

Scientists Disarm AIDS Virus

Scientists say they have found a way to disarm the AIDS virus in research that could lead to a vaccine. Researchers have discovered that if they eliminate a cholesterol membrane surrounding the virus, HIV cannot disrupt communication among disease-fighting cells and the immune system returns to normal.

Scientists have discovered that HIV needs cholesterol, which it picks up from the first immune cells it infects, to keep the virus' outer membrane fluid. That allows it to communicate with - and disrupt - the body's immune system.

The long-term effect of this disrupted communication is to destroy the body’s normal defense against the AIDS virus, which is responsible for 1.8 million deaths each year.

But researchers say they can prevent HIV from damaging the immune system, if they remove the cholesterol from the virus’ outer membrane.

David Graham is a molecular biologist at The Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland.

“By stealing cholesterol from the envelope of the virus, we can neutralize the subversion," said Graham. "We’ve broken the code; we can shut down the type of interference that HIV is having on the immune system.”

The cholesterol used by HIV, Graham notes, is not the same cholesterol that circulates in blood and causes coronary artery disease. He says the AIDS virus incorporates cholesterol into its membrane from plasmacytoid dendritic cells or pDCs - the first immune cells to recognize the virus. The pDC cells normally signal the adaptive part of the immune system - T cells - to form a more specific, long-lasting response.

But through its newly-acquired cholesterol membrane, Graham says HIV reprograms the immune system - starting with the first responder cells - so they become hyperactive.

“These cells are just saying, 'No way. We’re not shutting off," he said. "We are going to keep responding.' And that causes the cells of the adaptive immune system to start shutting down.”

The T-cells do not respond properly, and the virus can spread.

Graham says this might explain why scientists have so far been unsuccessful in developing an AIDS vaccine. Many candidate vaccines attempt to bolster the T-cells, which have been weakened by what the virus does to the pDC cells.

Graham, along with his colleagues at several European universities, found a way to disable HIV’s cholesterol membrane so it cannot corrupt the first-responder cells, clearing the way for T-cells to fight the HIV infection, or pathogen, more effectively.

“The immune system now treated it more like a regular pathogen that you would encounter, and we would have normal immune responses that would result in protection," said Graham.

So far, research has been conducted only in the laboratory. But Graham says he hopes studies in animals and humans will eventually lead to an AIDS vaccine.

The research, funded by Britain’s Wellcome Trust and the U.S. National Institutes of Health, is described in an article published in the journal Blood.

[walker]

promising news but still a long way to go.. prevention is still the best policy rather than cure.

[ieaiaio]

chur oi wa pa gani mhuman

[niehrx]

pero at least naa na silay lead... few more years and they'll come up with a vaccine.

[kiamoy918]

This is one of the reasons ngano lisud kaau pangitaan ug cure ning sakita... Mao daw ni punishment sa Ginoo labi na sa mga polygamus partners...

[agasus]

this cost thousands of dollar.
walay pinoy mka afford pa ani..
LoL

[yvonne6]

even with HIV and AIDS being very scarry, people are still not afraid to fool around. and kapaet pa jud, ug natakdan raka sa imong partner even if you are a freakin loyal and faithful one. angay aning mga dili kapuyo kay sunogon ug buhi pa para dili na unta managhan

[loucellmar]

aguy mo gara na sila ug samot ani.. tsk tsk..
pero atleast nanai leads..
cancer napud unta sunod ma solutionan..