Clinical significance of immune-system laboratory tests

Anatomists and many other medical specialists rely on clinical laboratories for critical information to assist in diagnosis, prognosis, and the evaluation of treatments. However, the clinical laboratories do not always accompany their numbers with sufficient information about the significance of certain results: how great the quantitative variation of a given parameter might be in healthy subjects, and how likely it might be that a given qualitative (“yes” or “no”) result is a false positive or false negative. This situation has been particularly troublesome in the case of HIV, because there is no “gold standard” HIV test and the typically quantitated measure, CD4, varies widely for a variety of reasons that have nothing to do with HIV infection. For example, a person pronounced HIV-positive after having some vaccinations became HIV-negative again after a time, something that is not regarded as possible if HIV-positive denotes definitely active infection, as is commonly assumed. An important consequence of deficient information about HIV epidemiology is that students of anatomy may fear risking possible infection in dissection laboratories when the actual risk is negligible even in respect to anonymous cadavers in South Africa where the supposed incidence of HIV is particularly high. We have previously pointed to the need to improve HIV epidemiology and related public policy by recognizing and taking into account the weaknesses in HIV testing, which are the probable reason for at least some of the troubling conundrums and mutually contradictory data that seem inexplicable: conflicting estimates of HIV infections and of HIV-disease deaths from equally authoritative sources; apparently drastically different primary modes of transmission in different geographic regions; extreme racial disparities in HIV infection, with Asians and Asian Americans consistently less affected, by about one third, than white Americans, while black Americans are affected by as much as an order of magnitude more than white Americans. Testing uncertainties doubtless also contribute to the confusion as to whether certain conditions (e.g. lipodystrophy or nephropathy) should be described as HIV-associated or as AIDS-associated. In recent work we have found that the immune system, including CD4 counts, can be markedly enhanced by easily modified dietary supplementation that has none of the toxic side-effects of the antiretroviral drugs currently used in the attempt to elevate CD4 counts in HIV-positive people

AIDS since 1984: No evidence for a new, viral epidemic – not even in Africa

Since the discoveries of a putative AIDS virus in 1984 and of millions of asymptomatic carriers in subsequent years, no general AIDS epidemic has occurred by 2011. In 2008, however, it has been proposed that between 2000 and 2005 the new AIDS virus, now called HIV, had killed 1.8 million South Africans at a steady rate of 300,000 per year and that anti-HIV drugs could have saved 330,000 of those. Here we investigate these claims in view of the paradoxes that HIV would cause a general epidemic in Africa but not in other continents, and a steady rather than a classical bell-shaped epidemic like all other new pathogenic viruses. Surprisingly, we found that South Africa attributed only about 10,000 deaths per year to HIV between 2000 and 2005 and that the South African population had increased by 3 million between 2000 and 2005 at a steady rate of 500,000 per year. This gain was part of a monotonic growth trajectory spanning from 29 million in 1980 to 49 million in 2008. During the same time Uganda increased from 12 to 31 million, and Sub-Saharan Africa as a whole doubled from 400 to 800 million, despite high prevalence HIV. We deduce from this demographic evidence that HIV is not a new killer virus. Based on a review of the known toxicities of antiretroviral drugs we like to draw the attention of scientists, who work in basic and clinical medical fields, including embryologists, to the need of rethinking the risk-and-benefit balance of antiretroviral drugs for pregnant women, newborn babies and all others who carry antibodies against HIV

Yes to early detection of cancer - no to routine mammography examinations. Parting from wishful thinking, turning to new strategies

Many experts find it difficult to accept what experience has shown, namely that routine mammography examinations have lowered neither the breast cancer fatality rate nor the crude death rate. One aspect that has been neglected in propagating screenings is the high radiation sensitivity of genetically predisposed females (0.5% - 1.0%). These females should not be exposed to repeated X-rays for screening purposes. True preventive measures, which promise significant effects, include the avoidance of radiation exposure, especially during the early stages of life, and a restrictive use of oestrogen substitution therapies