February 20, 2008

Mathematical Model Maps Out Drug-Resistant HIV in San Francisco

A mathematical model unveiled by the University of California, Los Angeles AIDS Institute shows that drug-resistant strains of HIV will continue to impact San Francisco’s men who have sex with men (MSM) population over the next five years, ScienceDaily reports (sciencedaily.com, 2/17). However, this model also found that drug-resistant HIV may have made the city’s epidemic less severe by lowering its rate of new infections.
 
The mathematical model—called the Amplification Cascade Model—showed that while strains of HIV with dual- and triple-class resistance will increase, they will be less infectious than “wild-type” strains of the virus, strains that remain sensitive to all drug classes.

Study author and UCLA biomathematics professor Sally Blower told ScienceDaily, “Our Amplification Cascade Model has been validated by our reconstructions and can now be used to design novel and effective health policies for controlling single-, dual- and triple-class resistant strains of HIV in both resource-rich and resource-constrained countries.”
 

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Previous Comments:

keith, rochester, 2008-02-24 19:34:03
any model that just includes men with men sex is a bad model. you have just jumped back 26yrs. to grids how sad

Jack, San Francisco, 2008-02-21 15:37:49
It is very disturbing for anyone to create a "model" to predict the future, then not mention any actual data to back that up. Not even a margin of error? Are they saying it is flawless? Until such time as someone else reconstructs and validates the model, using it to design public health policies seems to be an alarmingly bad idea.