Pet avoidance doesn't stop kids from developing allergies to animals, new research contends. In fact, exposure to pets might actually be a better hindrance, the researchers say.
A study of Swedish children found that though being allergic to cats was the most common airborne childhood allergy, keeping cats didn't necessarily increase the risk of developing allergies in 7- to 11-year-olds.
The main risk for an allergy to pets "is if you already have it in your family," said study author Eva Ronmark. If that's the case, she said, it's wiser not to have a pet.
The Swedish-U.S. study found that children who had continuously owned cats or dogs actually developed fewer allergies to them than new pet owners, or those who had only been exposed earlier in life. Among children who were allergic to cats, 80 percent had never kept a cat at home.
Ronmark, an allergy expert at the Department of Medicine at the Central Hospital of Norrbotten in Lulea-Boden, Sweden, and colleagues from the University of Virginia at Charlottesville conducted the research. They studied 2,454 children in northern Sweden, starting at ages 7 and 8, on a yearly basis and gave them skin-sensitization tests every four years.
The new findings are published in the October issue of the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology.
AIDS and needles
People who catch the AIDS virus by using tainted drug needles are four times as likely to die over the next decade as those who acquire the infection through sex.
The difference is one of several changes in the demographics of AIDS deaths that have occurred since the introduction of drugs collectively known as highly active antiretroviral therapy, or HAART. Before the arrival of the regimen in late 1996, about half of people with HIV, which causes AIDS, died within 10 years of being diagnosed. Thanks to HAART, roughly 90 percent of people with HIV now can expect to live at least 10 years with the virus.
There's nothing unique about the nature of HIV in drug users, said Kholoud Porter, an epidemiologist specializing in AIDS at the MRC Clinical Trials Unit in London. So their poorer prognosis likely reflects two factors: piggyback infection with other deadly viruses, such as hepatitis C, and spotty adherence to HAART. Male drug users had a somewhat worse 10-year survival rate than women addicts, findings show. The results come from a study of 7,740 men and women in Europe, Australia and Canada infected with HIV.
The research appears in the Oct. 18 issue of The Lancet.
AIDS and circumcision
New research from India lends more support to the theory that uncircumcised men are much more likely to contract the AIDS virus from women during sex.
Due to the limitations of their studies, scientists haven't precisely linked lack of circumcision to higher rates of AIDS. But more definitive research results are expected in the next few years, and medical officials in Africa are already exploring the idea of circumcising adult men.
Many questions remain about circumcision campaigns, however. "Is it feasible, how do you provide the services, what are the obstacles, can it be done safely and affordably?" asked Daniel Halperin, an expert in AIDS and circumcision and senior technical adviser at the U.S. Agency for International Development.
In the new study, researchers examined the results of a larger study into risk factors for HIV infection among men who visited three sexually transmitted disease clinics in Pune, India. The researchers, including Indians and Americans, released their findings at the recent annual meeting of the Infectious Diseases Society of America in San Diego.
From 1993 to 2000, researchers enrolled 2,298 HIV-negative men in the study.
Two of the 191 circumcised men became infected with HIV--0.7 percent--as did 165 of the 2,107 men--5.5 percent. In other words, the uncircumcised men were eight times more likely to develop HIV.
The rates of HIV infection between the two groups were similar even when other factors such as condom use and sexual behavior--such as patronage of prostitutes--were taken into account. The protective effects of circumcision seem to have to do with the vulnerability of the foreskin to HIV infection, experts say.