[e-drug] Re: cheaper drugs and behaviour change (cont)

[Scondras@aol.com]

E-drug: Re: cheaper drugs and behaviour change (cont)
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I would like to see any data that helps us understand the role of 
behavioral change.  I have seen somewhat detailed bar graphs showing 
changes in % of population by age group in five african countries which, if 
one were to extrapolate making fairly safe assumptions about sexual 
behavior, would correlate out to changes in rates of transmission. I think 
the topic deserves a detailed analysis so that we know what to emphasize, 
and, for that matter, get a tool with which to measure what is succeeding 
and what is not.

This might be pie in the sky given the difficulty of collecting data on an 
onging basis which might be a bit of a luxury in the midst of the epidemic. 
I would also like to know if there is evidence that parasitic burden 
correlates with aggregate viral load, to what extent if any reducing STD's 
other than HIV can reduce HIV transmission ( I only know of one study of 
this from Slim Kareem in South AFrica at the MRC) and whether treatment of 
TB in particular reduces viral load in HIV positive people, what the set 
point in
different areas is ( the MAC cohort study puts it at 26,000 or so in the 
USA and I must assume that this helps set the transmission rate, although 
admittedly if the first burst of viremia is when most transmission occurs 
this might be irrelevant) etc.

Perhaps there is no way to tease out this info.

David Scondras
Scondras@aol.com


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