Smokers may have higher risk of HIV

LONDON (Reuters) - Smoking, already linked to several illnesses, may also increase the risk of infection with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, researchers said on Thursday. In a review of studies that looked at the association between smoking and HIV, British doctors said five of the six studies they analysed showed smokers had a higher chance of becoming infected

About 40 million people worldwide are living with HIV/AIDS. Nearly 5 million were newly infected in 2005 and more than 3 million adults and children died of AIDS in the same year.

more here on the story.

news.yahoo.com...

Though I dont smoke this sounds weird to me. I thought that the HIV virus was a sexually transmitted disease. Or sharing needles if you do drugs. I had no clue smoking increases this.

wrap it up
keep it safe

drink til ya faint
smoke til ya choke

Here you go for the question about HIV, I got distracted. Sorry.

Cell Alive-HIV/AIDS site

HIV/ Virus structure

HIV Self-testing

AIDS NEWS

Interesting - it's just a shame that Reuters didn't link to the systematic review and show the conclusions.

I shall have to see if I am strong enough to find the pubmed link

TD

There you go.

abstract only

Typical bloody systematic review - 'such and such *may* cause such and such, but of course, there may be confounding factors. We recommend more research.'

The full article is available if you pay money, or alternatively sneak into any university/research centre that has access to pubmed.

Confounders are 'false associations' that affect the internal validity of your study - meaning that your conclusions could be wrong.

The classic example is: people with grey hair have more heart disease than people with brown hair. If you thought that grey hair caused heart disease you'd be confounded!

Confounders in this case could be stuff like.....smokers tend to engage in promiscuous sex more than non-smokers. Or smokers tend to inject drugs with shared needles more than non-smokers. Or smokers tend to come from lower social classes that have a higher rate of HIV infection anyway.

Statistics. Don't you just love it?

TD

The only thing I can think of is that smoking decreases the amount of oxygen in the blood. HIV doesn't like oxygen. So, maybe that is the connection? Just my speculation....I'm no doctor.

probably that smoker`s are more inclined to drink and drinker`s are more inclined to drink heavily and heavy drinkers are more inclined to have unprotected casual sex..or to get involved in drugs...IMO

Do you really think that what their saying? I mean to say smokers have a higher risk of hiv, wow, where do they really get that at?

Ermmm where to start???

I drink but I don,t do drugs or smoke and sex is kinda difficult since my gf is 3500 miles away..So the chain from smoking to drugs n sex is kinda broken there..

Besides I wouldn,t have thought smokers would score so often coz their breath smells

Ah wait I see it now!! It,s coz smokers get all the skanky ones that don,t mind you smelling like an ashtray

Originally posted by AGENT_T
Ermmm where to start???

I drink but I don,t do drugs or smoke and sex is kinda difficult since my gf is 3500 miles away..So the chain from smoking to drugs n sex is kinda broken there..

Besides I wouldn,t have thought smokers would score so often coz their breath smells

Ah wait I see it now!! It,s coz smokers get all the skanky ones that don,t mind you smelling like an ashtray

Hello Agent-T, I should have made clear I was coming up with hypothetical reasons.