The CDC HIV/Hepatitis/STD/TB Prevention News Update (Printable Version)

GEORGIA: "HIV Effort Cut in Georgia"

UNITED STATES: "Dating Violence Can Affect Teenagers, Too"

CANADA: "Fewer Teens Report Having Intercourse"

AUSTRALIA: "Sex and the Septuagenarian"

BOTSWANA: "Research Canadian Mathematicians, Grad Students to Tackle Disease with Numbers"

UNITED STATES: "Risk Factors for Prevalent and Incident Trichomonas vaginalis Among Women Attending Three Sexually Transmitted Disease Clinics"

ALASKA: "Cases of Infectious Diseases Drop in Alaska"

INDIANA: "Northern Indiana County Warns of Hoax STD Calls"

CANADA: "Leading Canadian AIDS Researcher Given France’s Highest Honor"

 About the Prevention News Update
 Subscribe to the Prevention News Update
 Locate more News
 

GEORGIA:
"HIV Effort Cut in Georgia"   back to top
Atlanta Journal-Constitution , (08.22.2008)   Craig Schneider

On Thursday, CDC officials confirmed that Georgia is no longer among the states taking part in its state-of-the-art program to track HIV incidence. Georgia had been participating for the past three years, receiving more than $1 million to conduct the advanced testing, which can distinguish longstanding HIV infections from ones acquired within the previous five months.

The funding cut does not affect any other state HIV/AIDS testing or services. But advocates said that since the state has never been on the cutting edge of HIV surveillance, testing or prevention, the loss is significant. CDC increased the state’s funding this year for basic HIV/AIDS reporting by 70 percent, to $726,257.

In 2007, Georgia had 32,740 HIV/AIDS cases, a 27 percent jump over the total in 2004. State officials said the CDC program revealed there were an estimated 2,100 newly acquired HIV infections in 2006. That cannot be put into perspective, however, since the state has no previous incidence data for any comparison, officials noted.

CDC has reduced the number of jurisdictions included in the HIV incidence program from 34 to 25 cities and states, said Irene Hall, CDC’s chief of HIV incidence and case surveillance. The process for inclusion was competitive, but CDC officials declined to discuss reasons why Georgia did not make the cut.

“It’s a setback,” said Dr. Carlos del Rio, co-director for the Emory Center for AIDS Research. “In order to have effective prevention, we need to know who is getting infected today, not 10 years ago.”

Jeff Cheek, the local director of federal Ryan White funding in the metro area, said the state needs to intensify testing and prevention efforts.

UNITED STATES:
"Dating Violence Can Affect Teenagers, Too"   back to top
Reuters , (07.22.2008)   Amy Norton

In a nationally representative poll of US teenagers, serious dating violence, including physical abuse, sexual assault or being threatened with a weapon, was reported by 2.7 percent of girls and 0.6 percent of boys. The results were derived from a telephone-based survey completed by 3,614 adolescents ages 12 to 17.

Kate B. Wolitzky-Taylor and colleagues at the Medical University of South Carolina-Charleston reported that the teenagers who said they had been victimized by dating violence were almost four times as likely to experience symptoms of major depression or post-traumatic stress disorder. “Overall, these findings suggest that dating violence in adolescence is a significant public health issue to address, particularly for older adolescent girls,” they wrote.

Factors associated with greater risk included female sex, older age, experiencing other potentially traumatic events, and recent life stressors.

The authors also noted that the proportion of teenagers in abusive relationships may be higher than they found, because their questions dealt only with more serious forms of violent behavior. They did not include verbal abuse, or being slapped or shoved without injury.

The researchers called for stepped-up efforts to prevent and identify dating violence and conflict-management instruction for teens. In addition, teens should be taught to tell an adult when they have a friend who is a victim of dating violence.

The report, “Prevalence and Correlates of Dating Violence in a National Sample of Adolescents,” was published in the Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry (2008;47(7):755-762).

CANADA:
"Fewer Teens Report Having Intercourse"   back to top
Canadian Press , (08.20.2008)   Lauren La Rose

Fewer Canadian teens ages 15-19 are reporting having sexual intercourse, bringing the rate down to 43 percent in 2005 from 47 percent in 1996-1997, according to Statistics Canada. Data for the study came from 4,500 respondents to the 1996-1997 National Population Health Survey and about 10,000 respondents to each of the 2003 and 2005 Canadian Community Health surveys.

The rate for young women declined from 51 percent to 43 percent, while the rate for males remaining unchanged at 43 percent. Sexual debut before age 15 also declined, from 12 percent in 1996-1997 to 8 percent in 2005.

The reasons for the different rates found in young men and women were not explored in the study, said Michelle Rotermann, a Statistics Canada researcher. It could be that females having intercourse bear a larger risk for both pregnancy and STDs, and are more widely aware of those risks, said Dr. Andre Lalonde, executive vice president of the Society of Obstetricians and Gynecologists of Canada.

Reported condom use for teens ages 15-17 the last time they had sex was about 81 percent, but that dropped to 70 percent for teens ages 18-19. Previous research has found similar declines in condom use with age and less use among those taking oral contraceptives, the study said. Condom use also tends to decline among couples in longer-term relations, Rotermann said.

“It’s possible that youth between the ages of 18 and 19… are in longer-term relationships and therefore they perceive their risk for [STDs] to be lower, and so unfortunately they’re not using condoms,” Rotermann said.

Lalonde believes older teens out of school may not be getting the message about condoms, and said there is a need for a national initiative to promote sexual health.

AUSTRALIA:
"Sex and the Septuagenarian"   back to top
The Age (Melbourne) , (08.19.2008)   Annie Lawson

New research indicates the degree to which older Australians are sexually active and their potential risk for STDs.

Professor Victor Minichiello, who heads the school of health at the University of New England in Armidale, New South Wales, took part in the study, which was conducted among patients at Sydney’s largest sexual health center. The project examined the sexual practices of 2,004 persons age 50 and older from 1993 to 2003. Forty-five percent of female participants and almost 40 percent of men reported not using condoms, and only 5 percent of women and 17 percent of men reported always using them. Men and women alike reported at least one opposite-sex partner in the preceding three months. The women reported an average of three male partners in a lifetime; the men averaged 10 female partners.

About one-third of respondents agreed that it is difficult for older people to express themselves sexually. Male respondents were more likely than females to have had same-sex relationships. More than half the men and 60 percent of the women had not been tested for HIV. The results will be published in the Australasian Journal on Ageing.

“It is now evident a substantial proportion of people living with HIV are 50 years and older,” Minichiello said. “The second wave involves not only men but women who start dating again and feel that condoms are just for kids. For irrational reasons, they feel safe from STDs.”

Claire Hetzel, a Melbourne psychologist, said because many doctors do not see older people as sexual, “they don’t always run an STD test.” She established an advocacy group, Desirable Outcomes, to educate people in health care settings about the sexual health needs of older adults

BOTSWANA:
"Research Canadian Mathematicians, Grad Students to Tackle Disease with Numbers"   back to top
Telegraph-Journal (New Brunswi , (08.14.2008)   Canadian Press

A group of 25 African and Canadian graduate students and two leading mathematicians are teaching students in Botswana how diseases like HIV/AIDS, TB and malaria can be controlled by using math equations and formulas.

“What we’re trying to do with our team is develop these mathematical models so that when there’s a disease outbreak, health officials have some idea how to answer ‘what if’ questions,” said Arvind Gupta, scientific director of Canada’s federally funded math research network MITACS (Mathematics of Information Technology and Complex Systems). For instance, health officials can use models to help plan where to send supplies and which populations to target with awareness campaigns.

“It’s very important for health officials, because they need to figure out which groups they should target to stop the disease from spreading,” Gupta said. Models about AIDS look at how people interact and which groups are likely to come in contact, he said.

“Once you understand how much interaction there is, you can actually start predicting when you think the disease will get to other groups,” said Gupta, whose agency organized the Aug. 18-29 workshop.

With “outbreaks in one part of the world, other parts of the world are vulnerable,” said Abba Gumel, the mathematician leading the trip. Five years ago, SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) “started in China and within a day or two, we had cases in Canada as well,” he said.

UNITED STATES:
"Risk Factors for Prevalent and Incident Trichomonas vaginalis Among Women Attending Three Sexually Transmitted Disease Clinics"   back to top
Sexually Transmitted Diseases Vol. 35; No. 5: P. 484-488, (05.08.2008)   Donna J. Helms, MPH; Debra J. Mosure, PhD; Carol A. Metcalf, MBChB, MPH; John M. Douglas, Jr., MD; Kevin C. Malotte, DrPH; Sindy M. Paul, MD, MPH; Thomas A. Peterman, MD

Trichomonas vaginalis is the most common nonviral STD in the United States. It may be associated with adverse birth outcomes, and it may increase susceptibility to or transmission of HIV. The authors undertook the current study to describe the epidemiology of T. vaginalis in STD clinics and to characterize the risk factors associated with prevalent and incident T. vaginalis in the same population.

The data analyzed were collected from visits to three STD clinics - in Newark, N.J.; Long Beach, Calif.; and Denver, Colo. - between February 1999 and December 2001. Data were analyzed from 1,462 women ages 15 to 39 who were tested for T. vaginalis by culture at their initial visit and for 1,269 women with at least one follow-up visit. The researchers assessed risk factors for prevalent infections at baseline and incident infections among treated or previously uninfected women.

Thirteen percent of women had a prevalent infection at baseline. Risk factors included being age 20 or older, black race, less than 12 years of education, and concurrent chlamydial infection. An incident infection was noted in 4.6 percent of women at follow-up, with risk factors including older age (35-39), black race, concurrent chlamydial infection, multiple sex partners in the previous three months, and having had T. vaginalis at the visit before the incident infection.

“T. vaginalis incidence is high in women,” the authors concluded. “Risk factors for prevalent and incident infection are similar. T. vaginalis was associated with older age in women, unlike other [STDs].”

ALASKA:
"Cases of Infectious Diseases Drop in Alaska"   back to top
Associated Press , (08.09.2008)   

A new report by the state Department of Health and Social Services shows a drop in cases of HIV/AIDS and other STDs in 2007. New AIDS cases fell 35 percent, from 46 in 2006 to 30 last year; new HIV infections dropped 31 percent, from 88 cases in 2006 to 61 cases last year. These declines mostly reflect a statistical spike in 2006, when state health officials adopted new methods that allowed them to identify previously unreported cases of HIV and AIDS, and a return to normal in 2007, said Mollie Rozier, director of the state’s HIV/STD program. New cases of gonorrhea and syphilis also dropped last year, the report found. However, chlamydia infections increased 8 percent. Alaska appears to have partially recovered from a 2006 TB outbreak that resulted in 70 cases statewide. In 2007, 51 TB cases were recorded.

INDIANA:
"Northern Indiana County Warns of Hoax STD Calls"   back to top
Associated Press , (08.21.2008)   

St. Joseph County Health Department officials say residents should disregard any automated calls they receive purportedly from the agency about possible exposure to HIV or STDs. The messages are a hoax, said the department, adding that it would never leave personal medical information on an answering machine or through an automated system. Barb Baker, nursing director for the Health Department, said some of the people who received the calls were alarmed by the message. The calls appear to have been made at random, going to people ages 11-70, she noted.

CANADA:
"Leading Canadian AIDS Researcher Given France’s Highest Honor"   back to top
Canadian Press , (08.21.2008)   

Dr. Mark Wainberg has been awarded France’s highest honor for his work in HIV/AIDS. Wainberg was named a Chevalier, or knight, of the Legion d’honneur. In 1984, Wainberg founded McGill University’s AIDS Center and also co-chaired the International AIDS Conference that year. He serves as an advisory committee chair for France’s national AIDS program. In addition to his AIDS research, Wainberg was cited for improving ties between Canada and France.

Prevention News Update will not be published the week of August 25. Publication will resume on Tuesday, September 2.