December 2002

Senior Project to Focus on Minorities

The South Florida Senior HIV Intervention Project (SHIP), funded by the state Department of Health since 1997, has identified blacks and Hispanics as the fastest-growing segment of HIV+ senior citizens in the area. Florida health officials once viewed the HIV/AIDS problem among seniors as a “white, middle-class phenomenon,” but in 2001 some 85% of new diagnoses were among people of color; in 1986, minorities represented less than 50%. SHIP, which previously had no bilingual counselors, now employs one who speaks Creole and several who speak Spanish. The program presents workshops, distributes brochures, and gives away free condoms at local retirement communities. The group is also attempting to reach black seniors through churches. HIV Mutating Faster than Drugs

The HIV virus is mutating so quickly scientists are concerned that new drugs will be obsolete before they come on the market. A study published in August in the New England Journal of Medicine reported that 20 percent of 377 newly diagnosed patients in Canada and the U.S. have a form of the virus that is resistant to existing antiretroviral drugs. Although scientists have predicted this would happen since the mid-1990s, the speed of the mutation has caught the medical community off guard and alarmed researchers.

The study did find that the mutant HIV strains eventually could be suppressed by altering the multiple-drug “cocktail” that is currently the first line of defense. “This points to the importance of routine drug testing for newly infected patients so that the most effective first-line treatment program can be initiated,” said Douglas Richman, senior author and dirctor of the University of California at San Diego AIDS Research Institute.