The simple answer is ‘no’ according to Dr Brian Hughes, Infectious Diseases Physician and hepatitis specialist at John Hunter Hospital in Newcastle.

A warning has been issued by Tibotec, the manufacturers of Prezista (darunavir) regarding the risk of developing drug- induced hepatitis while taking the treatment.

A significant number of people with HIV suffer from stress, anxiety or depression. Living with these problems adds to the burden of illness that we all have to bear, reduces quality of life and can have a serious impact on treatments adherence, so it is worthwhile doing what you can to respond to stress and depression if it affects you.

Frocks and footy. Nature and yoga. Cabin fever and isolation. Tobin’s sea change has at times been a tricky mix. Tobin had been living in Sydney for years when he decided on his sea change. As Tobin puts it, ‘Things weren’t going well. Deep down I wanted to make changes.’ ‘HIV was one of the reasons for shifting, but there were other factors – a relationship breakdown, work not coming in, and the stresses of living in a city.

This ATPA fact sheet explains the current knowledge about cardiovascular (heart) disease risk in people living with HIV/AIDS, and some strategies for minimising risk.

Latest results presented by investigators at the CROI meeting in February in Boston suggested that treatment with abacavir (also found in the combination pills Kivexa and Trizivir) and ddI (didanosine, Videx) may significantly increase the risk of myocardial infarction, or heart attack.

While newer antiretrovirals do not appear to cause lipoatrophy, the disfiguring side effect characterised by loss of fat from the face and limbs, the problem is still very much with us. David Menadue examins the latest research and treatments.

Many HIV-positive people struggle with depression. Graham Douglas-Meyer shares his strategies for dealing with this most common form of mental illness.

Survival after diagnosis with AIDS-related neurological illnesses has improved since the advent of HAART, according to an abstract presented to the eleventh European AIDS Conference (EACS). Furthermore, patients on ARV regimens containing a higher number of drugs that crossed the ‘blood-brain barrier’ and got into the central nervous system (CNS) had better survival rates.

HIV-positive people need to be targeted for heart disease screening and treatment, according to one of the largest studies of HIV and cardiac health ever conducted; published in the October 15th edition of Clinical Infectious Diseases.