HEALTH AND BEAUTY CLOSE-UP-29 September 2008-Stanford University Researchers: Use of AIDS Test Can Prolong Life(C)2008 - CloseUpMedia - newsdesk@closeupmedia.com

A simple test given to HIV/AIDS patients in southern Africa could extend their lives by nearly a year and save health-care costs

In a release, the group noted:

The technique, known as the CD4 test, would be particularly valuable if it were given to patients early in their disease, before they became ill with an AIDS-related infection, the researchers found. Use of the test could prevent patients from developing these life-threatening complications and save on costly hospitalizations.

"There is an important public health message here: You can improve health outcomes and make people live longer-and save money. It's a real opportunity," said senior author Douglas K. Owens, MD, senior investigator at the Palo Alto-VA and a professor of medicine and of health research and policy at Stanford.

Eran Bendavid, MD, the first author on the paper, said he hopes the study will help public and private organizations that provide antiretroviral, or ARV, therapy in Africa, where two-thirds of the world's 33 million HIV patients live.

"We hope public health officials and clinicians understand that the test is a technology worth investing in," said Bendavid, a postdoctoral scholar in infectious diseases and in health research and policy. The study will appear in the Sept. 22 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine.

In recent years, government and private organizations have responded to the urgent need to step up access to ARVs, providing this life-prolonging treatment to some 3 million HIV/AIDS patients worldwide, most of them in Africa. With drug access now increasing, clinicians need to know how best to manage these patients, including when to start them on treatment and when to change their drug regimen, if necessary, Owens said.

To help address these questions, the study examined the costs and health benefits of managing HIV/AIDS patients in southern Africa with CD4 and one other form of testing, viral load, over their lifetimes.

Today, caregivers in Africa typically monitor patients by observing their symptoms, starting them on drug therapy when they develop an opportunistic infection, such as tuberculosis or pneumonia.

But there are other, more sophisticated methods of tracking the course of a patient's disease. These include the CD4 test, which measures the number of these crucial, disease-fighting cells of the immune system. CD4 cells are targeted by the AIDS virus and, as their numbers decline, patients become more prone to developing life-threatening infections. The CD4 test is simple and quick to administer and may require only a simple finger prick to obtain blood that is then analyzed in a cell-sorter, a desktop machine about the size of a personal computer, Bendavid said. Results can be available in as little as 10 minutes.

In addition to the CD4 test, doctors in the United States and other developed countries routinely use the viral load test, which measures the amount of virus in a patient's bloodstream, to help gauge the extent of disease and how a patient is responding to treatment.

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