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THE widespread belief that the latest drugs for fighting Aids are reducing death rates has been confounded by a huge study covering 10 years of treatment which involved more than 22,000 patients in Europe and North America.
The study, reported in The Lancet, compared groups of HIV-positive patients started on highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) at different times between 1995 and 2003, and followed them for one year. Some of the major findings showed that although HAART appeared to be getting better at bringing down levels of the virus, there was no decrease in overall death rates. In fact, patients' risk of developing or dying from Aids has actually increased in recent years.
In a commentary on the study headed HAART's First Decade: Success Brings Further Challenges, Aids specialists say these "somewhat paradoxical" trends may be due to changing characteristics in the patients. Between 1995 and 2003, while the proportion of HIV-infected male homosexuals nearly halved, there were more patients with tuberculosis, probably among immigrants and refugees from countries where the disease is more common. Scientists have noted previously that TB patients can become immediately more...