Affordable health care is more likely
Thanks to Obamacare, insurance companies can no longer refuse healthcare coverage to people with pre-existing conditions. That means people with HIV/AIDS should be able to get coverage, at least they should once all the wrinkles are ironed out.
“Full implementation of the Affordable Care Act is getting HIV-positive patients onto the exchanges,” says Michael Horberg, MD, director of HIV/AIDS at Kaiser Permanente and immediate past chair of the HIV Medicine Association.
Only 17% of people living with HIV have private insurance and about 30% don’t have any coverage at all, not even government-sponsored insurance.
And while the cost of HIV/AIDS drugs is coming down, treatment can run $10,000 or more a year. Tivicay will cost an estimated $14,000 a year.
The first “functional cure” seen in an HIV+ baby
In March, researchers reported the first “functional cure” of HIV in a baby born two-and-a-half years ago in Mississippi. The so-called Mississippi Baby–no one knows if it is a boy or a girl–was treated for HIV unusually early in life, within 30 hours of birth. Medication yet was later stopped, but the virus is only detectable with super-sensitive tests and, importantly, is not replicating.
Other hopeful stories have trickled in during the year. Two HIV patients who received bone marrow transplants for blood cancer also have no detectable HIV even after discontinuing antiretroviral therapies. And 14 French patients who started HIV therapy within two months of becoming infected also discontinued medications without–so far–a rebound in virus levels.
“If you can catch HIV early enough in the infection by giving medication, there’s some data suggesting that early intervention makes a difference in the disease course,” says Michael Kolber, MD, PhD, professor of medicine and director of the Comprehensive AIDS Program at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine.
So much has happened over the past few years, in fact, that HIV/AIDS experts are cautiously whispering the word “cure.”
“There is a lot of talk about a cure which is a word we’ve very rarely ever used in this field,” Dr. Berkowitz says. “It’s a bit premature and overly optimistic, but there have been some very exciting turns leading to this optimism.”
http://news.health.com/2013/11/29/4-success-stories-in-the-fight-against-aids-in-2013/