HIV/AIDS News & Information

While the CHSDRSP reference services and the pilot study have identified HIV-1 non-B subtypes in most provinces, the present results suggest that the proportion of non-B subtypes varies between geographic regions. The CHSDRSP pilot study identified no non-B subtypes from Newfoundland, whereas up to 15.6% of the samples from British Columbia belonged to this group. [...]

At the end of 1996, there were approximately 40,000 Cana­dians living with HIV infection. The number of incident HIV infections in Canada for 1996 was approximately 4200, higher than the average of 2500 to 3000/year from 1989 to 1994. An analysis of the distribution of incident infec­tions by exposure category illustrates a changing face of [...]

Logistic regression to determine the simultaneous effects among variables indicated that age and year of first testing positive for HIV were significantly associated with a non-B outcome (P=0.009 and P=0.0003, respectively) in the sam­pled population. Compared with the B-subtype, the likelihood of a non-B subtype among those diagnosed with HIV was 1.11 times greater for [...]

Stored serum specimen from individuals newly diag­nosed with HIV in 1996, 1997, 1998, and up to March 15, 1999 were included in this pilot study. The samples represent be­tween 4% to 6% of HIV-positive tests reported by British Colum­bia to the Division of HIV Surveillance, Bureau of HIV, STD and TB for each year, and [...]

At a national consensus meeting in January 1998 to dis­cuss the feasibility of the goals of CHSDRSP, working groups including federal, provincial and territorial stakeholders rec­ommended piloting the surveillance methodologies at one or more sites before implementing CHSDRSP nationwide. The five sites included in this pilot phase were British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Newfoundland. [...]

Laboratory References Services, Bureau of HIV/AIDS, STD and TB, LCDC Provincial health laboratories (PHLs) and Canadian Blood Service are involved in HIV testing of individuals, and as such are key partners to CHSDRSP. A number of factors that result in unusual serological responses are relatively well estab­lished (seroconversion and cross-reactivity to HIV-2) and are recognized [...]

To assess genetic markers for drug resistance Monitoring and assessing the patterns of primary drug re­sistance, such as is done for resistant forms of other sexually transmitted diseases including gonorrhea, can enhance the utility of CHSDRSP. Determining the extent of resistant viral genotypes among those recently diagnosed with HIV infection would be useful in developing [...]