New treatment guidelines regarding Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) by the World Health Organization (WHO) recommends offering earlier therapy for patients. Administering anti-retroviral therapy (ART) earlier in patients could prevent additional 3 million deaths and 3.5 million new HIV infections between now and 2025.
Recent evidence indicates that ART treatment will aid HIV infected individuals in living longer and healthier lives, while reducing the risk of HIV transmission to others.
The new guidelines, launched at the 7th International AIDS Society (IAS) here at Kuala Lumpur last Sunday, encourages all countries to initiate treatment in all HIV positive individuals when their CD4 cell counts falls below 500. This is as opposed to previous recommendations where treatment was offered only at 350 cell counts and below.
This suggestion is based on evidence that earlier ART treatment on individuals with HIV can both keep them healthy and lowers the amount of virus in the blood, therefore reducing the chances of passing it on.
While Malaysia endorses the WHO recommendation at the launch, the nation’s Health Ministry said that they would conduct a study regarding the proposal in order to work out the issues and challenges before implementing it within the country.
The nation’s current ART treatment guideline is set for 350 and below CD4 cell counts.
In other AIDS related news around the country, Dr. Howie Lim from the Centre of Excellence for Research in AIDS (CERIA) University Malaya will be the first Malaysian to be rewarded with the IAS-NIDA research fellowship.
The research fellowship is co-sponsored by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), part of the U.S National Institute of Health, and entitles Dr. Lim to USD 75,000 to pursue his research project.
Dr. Lim will utilize innovative technology to collect behavioural data to better understand the correlation between substance use and sexual risk behaviours.
The winning research, titled “Concurrency of substance use and sexual risk behaviours among men who have sex with men (MSM) in Malaysia”, will see him undergo a mentorship programme with Yale University, USA.
Story from: The New Straits Times – Malaysia to adopt new guidelines in combating HIV/AIDS, First Malaysian to receive AIDS research fellowship
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