  
Blindness threatens HIV-infected patients in developing countries
Last Updated: 2001-04-19 13:20:19 EDT (Reuters Health)
By Alan Mozes
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - An epidemic of blindness is poised to strike a large portion of the nearly 34 million people with HIV infection who live in developing countries, researchers warn.
Scientists from Belgium and the United States caution that while an expected rise in the availability of antiretrovirals will prolong life in such regions, remaining inadequacies in treatment will render patients increasingly vulnerable to opportunistic infections that can impair or destroy vision.
"Even though people usually talk only about the life-threatening consequences of AIDS, its visual consequences should not be underestimated," said Dr. Emmett T. Cunningham, Jr.
Dr. Cunningham directs the Uveitis Service and The Pearl & Samuel J. Kimura Ocular Immunology Laboratory at the University of California at San Francisco Medical Center. He and his colleague Dr. Philippe G. Kestelyn of Ghent University Hospital in Belgium wrote an overview of HIV and blindness that is published in the Bulletin of the World Health Organization.
Drs. Cunningham and Kestelyn point out that vision loss associated with cytomegalovirus retinitis, syphilis, tuberculosis, cryptococcal meningitis and other infections often occurs in advanced stages of HIV infection. They estimate that hundreds of thousands of HIV patients living in sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia have already experienced vision loss.
"It's going to be difficult," Dr. Cunningham told Reuters Health. "Given the limited resources, incomplete treatment is going to occur and people are going to choose to live longer even with opportunistic infections because the alternative is also not very appealing. I don't have an easy solution, to be honest."
Bulletin of the World Health Organization 2001;79:208-213.
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