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Showing posts with the label HIV

Solar plane lands in New York City

A solar-powered airplane finished crossing the United States on Saturday, landing in New York City after flying over the Statue of Liberty during its historic bid to circle the globe, the project team said.  The spindly, single-seat experimental aircraft, dubbed Solar Impulse 2, arrived at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport at about 4 a.m. local time after it took off about five hours beforehand at Lehigh Valley International Airport in Pennsylvania, the team reported on the airplane's website.  Such a pleasure to land in New York! For the 14th time we celebrate sustainability," said the project's co-founder Andre Borschberg on Twitter after flying over the city and the Statue of Liberty during the 14th leg of the trip around the globe. The Swiss team flying the aircraft in a campaign to build support for clean energy technologies hopes eventually to complete its circumnavigation in Abu Dhabi, where the journey began in March 2015. The solar cr...

A man died with due to tapeworm tumour

A man has died with tumours made of cancerous parasitic worm tissue growing in his organs, doctors report.  The patient had HIV and his weakened immune system allowed the worm-cancer to flourish.  The unusual case was diagnosed through a collaboration between the US Centers for Disease Control and the UK's Natural History Museum.  Doctors said the case, detailed in the New England Journal of Medicine, was "crazy" and unusual.  Colombian doctors had tried to diagnose the 41-year-old man in 2013. He had what appeared to be normal tumours, some more than 4 cm  across, in his lungs, liver and elsewhere in his body.  But on closer inspection the cancerous cells were clearly not human - they were tiny at just a tenth of the size of a human cell.  "It didn't really make sense," said Dr Atis Muehlenbachs, who picked up the "crazy" case at the US Centers of Disease Control.He ran through several theories including shrinking human cancer cells or ev...

Antiretroviral drugs is effective for HIV, the World Health Organisation says

This latest policy removes previous limits suggesting patients wait until the disease progresses.  The WHO has also recommended people at risk of HIV be given the drugs to help prevent the infection taking hold.  UNAIDS said these changes could help avert 21 million AIDS-related deaths and 28 million new infections by 2030.  The recommendations increase the number of people with HIV eligible for antiretrovirals from 28m to 37m across the world.  But the challenge globally will be making sure everyone has access to them and the funds are in place to pay for such a huge extension in treatment. Only 15m people currently get the drugs.  The recommendations have less relevance to the UK however. Nine in 10 people with diagnoses are already on the drugs with patients entitled to ask for them before they reach the threshold WHO refers to.  Although the use of the treatment as a preventative measure is not recommended. What are antiretrovirals? Antiret...