Cosmetic procedures a high risk for hepatitis C
Chinese people are more likely to contract hepatitis C from a cosmetic and beauty treatments than from medical procedures or blood transfusion, a study from Jilin shows.
Researchers found that hepatitis C rates had increased rapidly in Yanbian, Jilin, more than doubling from 2007 to
2011. Unexpectedly,
they found that cosmetic treatments conferred the higest risk - almost five fold higher than control groups. Having someone esle in the family with HCV was also a high risk for infection, presumably through sexual transmission between spouses, the researchers said. Writing in PLOS One, the researchers for the Capital Medical University, Beijing, said cosmetic treatments had become popular in recent years and there was a risk of viral infection with procedures that broke the skin such as shaving and ear piercing.
Atherosclerosis defined in stroke
Intracranial atherosclerosis (ICAS) is the most common vascular lesion in patients with cerebrovascular disease in China, a study
has shown.
Researchers at the Tiantan Hospital in Beijing assessed 2864
consecutive patients who experienced an acute cerebral ischemia and
found the prevalence of ICAS was 47%. Patients with ICAS had more
severe stroke at admission and stayed longer in hospitals compared with
those without intracranial stenosis. According to the study in Stroke, after 12 months, recurrent stroke occurred in 3.3% of patients with no
stenosis, in 3.8% for those with 50% to 69% stenosis, in 5.2% for
those with 70% to 99% stenosis, and in 7.3% for those with total
occlusion.
STI risk high for men who visit prostitutes
Men who have unprotected sex with prostitutes are at high risk of HIV and syphilis, Guangxi research has shown. A study of more than 100 men who visited prostitutes found a high rate of unprotected sex (84%). The overall prevalence of HIV, hepatitis C and syphilis was 1.9%, 1.0% and 18.4%, respectively, according to the study published in Sexually Transmitted Infections.
Parasite problems on the Tibetan plateau
Worm parasites are an endemic problem for Tibetans, especially nomadic herders, a study has found.
Echinococcosis affects more than 380,000 people on the Tibet-Qinghai plateua, is spread by dogs and cattle, and is often picked up from drinking groundwater, according to a study by Chinese researchers. Those most at risk include the old and female in particular. Writing in Infectious Diseases of Poverty, the researchers said control of the parasites should focus on deworming both owned and stray dogs and health education activities n Tibetan language.
Showing posts with label STIs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label STIs. Show all posts
Sunday, 2 February 2014
Thursday, 3 January 2013
In Guangzhou, HIV treatment group tests the waters of reform
by Dan Levin
As he waited to give blood for an H.I.V. test one recent afternoon, Le, a 25-year-old marketing professional, explained why he was there. “I was aware of the consequences” of not using a condom, he said, “but somehow I didn’t know how to say no.”
Le, a gay man who would give only his first name, was being tested at the Lingnan Health Center, an organization run largely by gay volunteers, whose walls are adorned with red AIDS ribbons and a smiling condom mascot. In the past, Le went to hospitals to be tested, he said, but the stigma of being a gay man in China made the experience particularly harrowing.
“I’d always be concerned about what the doctors would think of me,” Le said. “Here we’re all in the same community, so there’s less to worry about.”
Le is one of thousands of gay men in this bustling city of 13 million people who are benefiting from a pioneering experiment that supporters hope will revolutionize the way the Communist Party deals with non-government groups trying to stop the spread of AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases.
Encouraged by the new slate of leaders who came to power in November, civil society activists hope the model taking shape here in the prosperous southern province of Guangdong, which has long served as a petri dish for economic reform, will be replicated nationally, not just in the fight against disease but also on issues like poverty, mental health and the environment.
While China’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention has allowed community organizations across the country to participate in disease testing programs since 2008, in practice those efforts remain patchy. But in November, just before World AIDS Day the following month, the grass-roots movement received a high-profile endorsement from the incoming prime minister, Li Keqiang.
At a meeting with advocates for AIDS patients, Mr. Li, a large red ribbon pinned to his jacket, promised more government support and shook hands with H.I.V.-positive people. The image resounded in a society where those infected are routinely turned away from hospitals and hounded from their jobs. “Civil society plays an indispensable role in the national battle against H.I.V./AIDS,” he said, according to the state news media.
Activists remain wary, however, noting that the government has made similar promises in the past. And despite the high-level support and a policy in Guangdong allowing grass-roots groups to register directly with the government — instead of being forced to find an official sponsor, as in much of the country — many organizations say they still are stymied by dizzying bureaucratic hurdles or rejected for missing unannounced deadlines.
Tao Cai, the director of AIDS Care China, which provides support to 30,000 H.I.V.-positive people nationwide but remains unregistered, believes the obstacles come from local officials who are trying to prevent nonprofit groups from competing with their fiefs. “In China,” he said, “we say reform never gets out of Zhongnanhai,” a reference to the walled compound for senior leaders in Beijing.
There is little doubt that public health officials need help. Through October, nearly 69,000 new H.I.V. infections were reported in China in 2012, a 13 percent rise from the same period in 2011. Almost 90 percent of those cases were contracted through sexual intercourse, with rising numbers involving gay men. Medical experts also worry about syphilis, which has returned with a vengeance after being virtually wiped out during the Mao era.
Reported cases of syphilis, known in the south as “Guangdong boils,” have increased more than tenfold in the last decade, according to national statistics. As with H.I.V., gay men and sex workers are particularly at risk. Local health experts estimate that 5 percent of men who have sex with other men carry H.I.V., while around 20 percent test positive for syphilis.
The Chinese authorities have long tackled the rise in communicable diseases among gay men with all the sensitivity of a swinging billy club. In raids on bars, bathhouses and parks, police officers and health officials often force those detained to hand over their IDs and submit to blood tests.
Grass-roots health groups have been frequent targets of official harassment as well. In most provinces, they can legally register with the Bureau of Civil Affairs only if they are sponsored by a government agency. But advocates say few agencies are willing to vouch for groups focused on politically fraught issues like homosexuality, prostitution or sexually transmitted diseases.
In the face of such constraints, the majority of China’s estimated 1,000 H.I.V. organizations operate in a legal purgatory that deprives them of tax benefits and makes it risky to accept foreign donations, usually their main source of support.
Mr. Li, the incoming premier, has a spotty record when it comes to H.I.V. In the 1990s, when he was the top official in central Henan Province, a botched blood-collection program there infected hundreds of thousands of people with H.I.V. Critics say Mr. Li was more interested in covering up the problem than dealing with its causes. Even as he was holding court with AIDS groups, over a hundred of those infected in the scandal marched in Beijing to the Ministry of Health demanding justice.
Mr. Li’s views appear to have changed. In November, social media erupted over the case of a 25-year-old man seeking treatment for lung cancer who was turned away from two Beijing hospitals because he was H.I.V.-positive. A hospital in nearby Tianjin finally removed the tumor — but only after he altered his medical records to conceal his H.I.V. status from doctors. As a battle raged online between those condemning his actions and those sympathizing with his plight, Mr. Li ordered the Health Ministry to prohibit hospitals from rejecting AIDS patients.
For the vast majority of Chinese, AIDS remains a fearful issue. People who get infected with H.I.V. often become social outcasts, a situation made more perilous by the absence of legal protections for those who lose their jobs or their homes.
After he came out as gay and H.I.V.-positive on Chinese television in 2005, an artist who goes by the pseudonym Da Wei was promptly fired. Then he was evicted from his apartment by his landlord — a doctor — who showed up at his door with printed images of his face from TV. “He said he had no problem with my health condition, but what would the other tenants think?” the man recalled in a phone interview.
Even medical professionals who work with AIDS patients are not immune from discrimination. “Other doctors are afraid they’ll catch H.I.V. from my lab coat,” said Chen Xiejie, the vice director of infectious diseases at the Guangzhou No. 8 People’s Hospital. “If I go to their offices they say, ‘Don’t sit down.’ They won’t even shake my hand.”
The Lingnan Health Center, a comfortable space decorated with couches and a fish tank, strives to be more welcoming toward the dozens of gay men who come each day to roll up their sleeve and learn their fate. If they get bad news, patients can return for counseling and information on medical treatment.
“We want it to feel like home, not a hospital,” said Meng Gang, Lingnan’s founder.
The center’s employees say unsafe sex is all too common among those tested, a result of deeply closeted lives.
“With gay men the sex is all underground,” said Xiao Mi, a Lingnan staff member.
According to Mr. Meng, most gay men will forgo condoms rather than challenge a partner who says he is not infected with H.I.V. “It’s an issue of face,” he said.
Mr. Meng founded Lingnan five years ago as a health-focused offshoot of his gay advocacy organization, Guangtong, which offers services like sex education, counseling on coming out, and online dating through its Web site, which receives around three million visitors a year.
Guangtong delves into a realm the Chinese government prefers to keep shrouded. Homosexual characters are banned from television, gay film festivals cannot advertise, and the police often force lesbian and gay organizations to cancel programs during politically delicate events.
Despite the state-sanctioned prejudices, Chinese health officials say cooperation with grass-roots organizations is beginning to transform the government’s approach to such issues.
“The fight against S.T.D.’s is not just about public health,” said Yang Bin, the director of the provincial sexually transmitted disease control center. “It’s a political issue, too.”
Source: NYT
As he waited to give blood for an H.I.V. test one recent afternoon, Le, a 25-year-old marketing professional, explained why he was there. “I was aware of the consequences” of not using a condom, he said, “but somehow I didn’t know how to say no.”
Le, a gay man who would give only his first name, was being tested at the Lingnan Health Center, an organization run largely by gay volunteers, whose walls are adorned with red AIDS ribbons and a smiling condom mascot. In the past, Le went to hospitals to be tested, he said, but the stigma of being a gay man in China made the experience particularly harrowing.
“I’d always be concerned about what the doctors would think of me,” Le said. “Here we’re all in the same community, so there’s less to worry about.”
Le is one of thousands of gay men in this bustling city of 13 million people who are benefiting from a pioneering experiment that supporters hope will revolutionize the way the Communist Party deals with non-government groups trying to stop the spread of AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases.
Encouraged by the new slate of leaders who came to power in November, civil society activists hope the model taking shape here in the prosperous southern province of Guangdong, which has long served as a petri dish for economic reform, will be replicated nationally, not just in the fight against disease but also on issues like poverty, mental health and the environment.
While China’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention has allowed community organizations across the country to participate in disease testing programs since 2008, in practice those efforts remain patchy. But in November, just before World AIDS Day the following month, the grass-roots movement received a high-profile endorsement from the incoming prime minister, Li Keqiang.
At a meeting with advocates for AIDS patients, Mr. Li, a large red ribbon pinned to his jacket, promised more government support and shook hands with H.I.V.-positive people. The image resounded in a society where those infected are routinely turned away from hospitals and hounded from their jobs. “Civil society plays an indispensable role in the national battle against H.I.V./AIDS,” he said, according to the state news media.
Activists remain wary, however, noting that the government has made similar promises in the past. And despite the high-level support and a policy in Guangdong allowing grass-roots groups to register directly with the government — instead of being forced to find an official sponsor, as in much of the country — many organizations say they still are stymied by dizzying bureaucratic hurdles or rejected for missing unannounced deadlines.
Tao Cai, the director of AIDS Care China, which provides support to 30,000 H.I.V.-positive people nationwide but remains unregistered, believes the obstacles come from local officials who are trying to prevent nonprofit groups from competing with their fiefs. “In China,” he said, “we say reform never gets out of Zhongnanhai,” a reference to the walled compound for senior leaders in Beijing.
There is little doubt that public health officials need help. Through October, nearly 69,000 new H.I.V. infections were reported in China in 2012, a 13 percent rise from the same period in 2011. Almost 90 percent of those cases were contracted through sexual intercourse, with rising numbers involving gay men. Medical experts also worry about syphilis, which has returned with a vengeance after being virtually wiped out during the Mao era.
Reported cases of syphilis, known in the south as “Guangdong boils,” have increased more than tenfold in the last decade, according to national statistics. As with H.I.V., gay men and sex workers are particularly at risk. Local health experts estimate that 5 percent of men who have sex with other men carry H.I.V., while around 20 percent test positive for syphilis.
The Chinese authorities have long tackled the rise in communicable diseases among gay men with all the sensitivity of a swinging billy club. In raids on bars, bathhouses and parks, police officers and health officials often force those detained to hand over their IDs and submit to blood tests.
Grass-roots health groups have been frequent targets of official harassment as well. In most provinces, they can legally register with the Bureau of Civil Affairs only if they are sponsored by a government agency. But advocates say few agencies are willing to vouch for groups focused on politically fraught issues like homosexuality, prostitution or sexually transmitted diseases.
In the face of such constraints, the majority of China’s estimated 1,000 H.I.V. organizations operate in a legal purgatory that deprives them of tax benefits and makes it risky to accept foreign donations, usually their main source of support.
Mr. Li, the incoming premier, has a spotty record when it comes to H.I.V. In the 1990s, when he was the top official in central Henan Province, a botched blood-collection program there infected hundreds of thousands of people with H.I.V. Critics say Mr. Li was more interested in covering up the problem than dealing with its causes. Even as he was holding court with AIDS groups, over a hundred of those infected in the scandal marched in Beijing to the Ministry of Health demanding justice.
Mr. Li’s views appear to have changed. In November, social media erupted over the case of a 25-year-old man seeking treatment for lung cancer who was turned away from two Beijing hospitals because he was H.I.V.-positive. A hospital in nearby Tianjin finally removed the tumor — but only after he altered his medical records to conceal his H.I.V. status from doctors. As a battle raged online between those condemning his actions and those sympathizing with his plight, Mr. Li ordered the Health Ministry to prohibit hospitals from rejecting AIDS patients.
For the vast majority of Chinese, AIDS remains a fearful issue. People who get infected with H.I.V. often become social outcasts, a situation made more perilous by the absence of legal protections for those who lose their jobs or their homes.
After he came out as gay and H.I.V.-positive on Chinese television in 2005, an artist who goes by the pseudonym Da Wei was promptly fired. Then he was evicted from his apartment by his landlord — a doctor — who showed up at his door with printed images of his face from TV. “He said he had no problem with my health condition, but what would the other tenants think?” the man recalled in a phone interview.
Even medical professionals who work with AIDS patients are not immune from discrimination. “Other doctors are afraid they’ll catch H.I.V. from my lab coat,” said Chen Xiejie, the vice director of infectious diseases at the Guangzhou No. 8 People’s Hospital. “If I go to their offices they say, ‘Don’t sit down.’ They won’t even shake my hand.”
The Lingnan Health Center, a comfortable space decorated with couches and a fish tank, strives to be more welcoming toward the dozens of gay men who come each day to roll up their sleeve and learn their fate. If they get bad news, patients can return for counseling and information on medical treatment.
“We want it to feel like home, not a hospital,” said Meng Gang, Lingnan’s founder.
The center’s employees say unsafe sex is all too common among those tested, a result of deeply closeted lives.
“With gay men the sex is all underground,” said Xiao Mi, a Lingnan staff member.
According to Mr. Meng, most gay men will forgo condoms rather than challenge a partner who says he is not infected with H.I.V. “It’s an issue of face,” he said.
Mr. Meng founded Lingnan five years ago as a health-focused offshoot of his gay advocacy organization, Guangtong, which offers services like sex education, counseling on coming out, and online dating through its Web site, which receives around three million visitors a year.
Guangtong delves into a realm the Chinese government prefers to keep shrouded. Homosexual characters are banned from television, gay film festivals cannot advertise, and the police often force lesbian and gay organizations to cancel programs during politically delicate events.
Despite the state-sanctioned prejudices, Chinese health officials say cooperation with grass-roots organizations is beginning to transform the government’s approach to such issues.
“The fight against S.T.D.’s is not just about public health,” said Yang Bin, the director of the provincial sexually transmitted disease control center. “It’s a political issue, too.”
Source: NYT
Friday, 23 November 2012
Clinical news in brief ....
Chinese herbalists at high risk of bladder cancer
Practitioners of traditional Chinese medicine who handle the toxic herb fangchi are at high risk of bladder cancers, a study has shown. Fangchi contains aristolochic acid which is known to cause urothelial carcinoma. Fangchi is commonly used in the Chinese herbal medicine industry and a study of 6,564 Chinese herbalists found that processing, selling or dispensing herbs containing fangchi significantly increased their risk of urothelial carcinoma by more than a factor of two.
"Exposure to the Chinese herbal drug fangchi increases the risk of urothelial carcinoma in herbalists. Appropriate medical monitoring is warranted for workers who have similar exposure," say researchers.
Read more: Journal of Urology
Bone loss factors in Chinese postmenopausal women
With advancing age, lean mass begins to decrease in women aged over 65 years, but fat mass levels show no significant difference between the age groups. Both fat mass and lean mass positively correlate with bone mineral density decreasing rates. Fat mass is the most significant determinant of bone loss at the lumbar spine, whereas lean mass is the most significant determinant of bone loss at the femoral neck and total hip.
Read more: Endocrine Journal
50% of rural women have reproductive tract infections
A study of 1500 women aged 30 to 59 years old in Shanxi Province found that 54% had reproductive tract infections such as cervicitis, trichomonas vaginitis, and bacterial
vaginitis. The study also showed that 14% had suspicious benign breast disease , 1.4% had cervical precancerous lesions and 0.2% had suspicious breast cancers. All the women expressed interesting taking part in a low cost program of combined screening for cervical cancer, breast cancer and
reproductive tract infections (RTIs).
Read more: Asia Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
Mercury causes birth defects in Chinese infants
High levels of mercury found in some pregnant Chinese women increase their risk of having a baby with neural tube defects, a study from has shown. Researchers from the Institute of Reproductive and Child Health/Ministry of Health Key Laboratory of Reproductive Health, Peking University found that the risk of neural tube defects was up to 18 times higher for babies who had in utero exposure to higher levels of mercury.
Read more: Reproductive Toxicology
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