Pustaka Ilmiah Universitas Padjadjaran

Abstrak

Rifampicin and Moxifloxacin for tuberculous meningitis-authors’ reply

From June 30 to July 3 many of the world’s leading HIV/AIDS researchers, practitioners, and allied professionals will converge on Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, for the seventh International AIDS Society Conference on Pathogenesis, Treatment, and Prevention. The content of this issue has been specially selected to refl ect some of the key issues in HIV/AIDS with Articles on monitoring and treatment and Reviews on the search for a cure and the biology and eff ects of HIV superinfection. One of the key themes of the conference is co-infection. HIV/AIDS not only enables opportunistic pathogens that otherwise rarely infect human beings to cause illness, it can also substantially worsen the manifestations of other pathogens—tuberculosis, for example, is more likely to cause active diseases in people infected with HIV, and infections with hepatitis B and hepatitis C viruses more rapidly lead to liver damage. Since the AIDS epidemic emerged, it has contributed to a global resurgence in tuberculosis. Of the estimated 34 million people infected with HIV in the world todaymore than a third are also infected with Mycobacterium tuberculosis. In Africa, four-fi fths of people with active tuberculosis are also infected with HIV. Worldwide, tuberculosis accounts for 25% of AIDS deaths; in Asia, this proportion is 40%. So it is no wonder that co-infection with tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS has received so much attention from the global health community. Great eff ort and resources have been invested in the improvement of diagnostic and treatment approaches for tuberculosis, and in recognition of the close association between the two diseases, the developments have simultaneously benefi ted many living with HIV. However, not all coinfections have, so far, received sufficient attention, and these diseases exact a substantial and growing toll on people with HIV/AIDS.