HIV Or Anti-HIV Drugs Unexpectedly Protect Against Multiple Sclerosis, Otherwise A Disease With No

[LiberalArkie]

HIV Or Anti-HIV Drugs Unexpectedly Protect Against Multiple Sclerosis, Otherwise A Disease With No Therapy


The researchers write

“If subsequent studies demonstrate there is a causal protective effect of HIV (and/or its treatment), and if the magnitude of it proves to be similar…this would be the largest protective effect of any factor yet observed in relation to the development of MS,”

The primary author of the study, Dr. Julian Gold of Prince of Wales Hospital in Australia, first observed casually that even though he treats patients with HIV and knows people with MS, he had never met a person with both. He searched through medical literature, and found 700,000 studies on HIV/AIDS and 300,000 studies on MS. Out of the approximately 1,000,000 studies, there was no reference to a patient who had both. Eventually, he did find one person whose symptoms of MS began to diminish when he began treatment for HIV.

As a result of this finding, a Danish research team looked at 5,000 people diagnosed with HIV and 50,000 without, but the sample size was too small that the negative connection did not warrant any statistically significance. Instead, Dr. Gold and his team moved onto the English Hospital Episode Statistics, a record of residents of England who had hospital stays. They looked at everyone who had been in the hospital between 1999 and 2011. There were 21,207 patients with HIV and compared those with 5,298,496 uninfected individuals.

Based on the frequency of MS diagnoses in the control group, they calculated that there should have been 18 HIV infected patients with a diagnosis of MS. Instead, they found only seven. Because the population pool was so large, this was a statistically significant finding and suggested that HIV/AIDS patients who receive treatment are 60% less likely to be diagnosed with MS. Segmentation of the population into a group that had been receiving treatment for at least five years found that they were 80% less likely to develop the disease.

Snip


http://www.neomatica.com/2014/08/16/hiv-anti-hiv-drugs-unexpectedly-protect-multiple-sclerosis-otherwise-disease-therapy/

[Avalux]

1. Interesting.

While there appears to be a correlation of some sort between HIV infection and MS, what exactly is going on here?

We have patients with HIV infection, on treatment, with MS. We have patients not infected with HIV, therefore not on treatment, with MS. A comparison of retrospective (uncontrolled) data was made.

Is HIV infection itself the reason why there are fewer MS diagnoses in that group of patients? Or - is it the treatment? There are an assortment of antiretrovirals to treat HIV infection, and they work differently which is why someone with HIV infection needs to take more than one at a time, based upon their HIV genotype. Of the patients in the study, were they all taking the same regimen of drugs? What were the inclusion/exclusion criteria to control variables?

The conclusion made from sorting through data of 5 million people might seem really promising; but it doesn't mean much unless they can figure out why.

[LiberalArkie]

2. I am sure there is some side effect of the drugs

Like the artery opening drug that help a few people but was found out to really work well for ed.

[Avalux]

3. But which drugs?

And how do they know, if one, or the combination prevented MS, or cured it? MS is an autoimmune disease - HIV infection attacks the immune system and weakens it. That unfortunate effect may keep MS at bay. Maybe MS patients were less sexually active.

My point is that the lower incidence of MS in HIV infected individuals may not mean anything at all.

[LiberalArkie]

4. I am sure the Brits will find out what it is, they tend to come up with most of the treatments

and cures. Their national heat care system seems to work pretty well.

[Avalux]

5. The answer has nothing to do with the British healthcare system.

Prospective clinical trials will need to be performed to prove the conclusion of this analysis of retrospective data. The problem for researchers - what do they test?

[jeff47]

7. They start with giving MS patients the anti-HIV treatment.

If that works, then it was something in the treatment that reduces MS. At that point they separate into the individual anti-HIV drugs and see if there's one that causes it, or if it's the whole treatment. From there, you look for a mechanism for the relevant drug(s) to affect MS. From that, you try to develop a drug that is better at doing that to MS patients.

If giving the HIV treatment doesn't work, then it is something in HIV infection that reduces MS. Much tougher to test, since you can't infect people with HIV. So you look at what HIV does to infected people, and try to figure out which mechanism may effect MS patients. Then you start testing with drugs that mimic that particular HIV effect.

[truedelphi]

6. Please keep articles like this coming.

The public needs and deserves a breakthrough on this awful illness.

[ncliberal]

8. Kick. nt