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HIV Hair Toxicology Screening

Reviewed By: Varnada Karriem-Norwood,

SOURCES: 2010 Medical Reference from Medstar Television. Monica Gandhi, M.D., M.P.H., Researcher, UCSF, AIDS Research Institute, San Francisco, CA.

© 1999-2011 Medstar Television

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Narrator:

Donna Haggerty has been living with HIV for twenty years.

Donna Haggerty :

When I found out I was HIV positive, the very same week I was told I had breast cancer.

Narrator:

The war against the cancer has been won… but Donna still takes over a dozen daily medications to keep the HIV virus in check.

Monica Gandhi, M.D., M.P.H.:

People are doing well. The problem is that they have to take these medications for life.

Narrator:

To make sure the patients are getting the right mix of lifesaving medications, doctors run blood tests, or ask the patients about compliance.

Monica Gandhi, M.D., M.P.H.:

And there are inherent limitations to that. One is that, uhm, the patient may not remember exactly how they've been taking over the last month. They may not want to tell you.

Narrator:

So, Doctor Gandhi and her colleagues found inspiration in crimefighting toxicology tests…and developed their own.

Monica Gandhi, M.D., M.P.H.:

We looked in the FBI literature. We looked in the, uhm, literature that looked at substances of abuse to get, uh, the sort of techniques on how to measure drug levels in hair. We started working with a laboratory at, uhm, UCSF to ask the question of how to measure HIV medications in hair.

Narrator:

They take hair samples from volunteers every six months, run them through their tests and come up with a report about each drug they take.

Monica Gandhi, M.D., M.P.H.:

The first panel shows me that you're taking your HIV medications extremely well.

Narrator:

Good news for donna, and good news for the test itself.

Monica Gandhi, M.D., M.P.H.:

The most important finding that we have is that we found that hair levels of HIV medication are the single most important predictor of how people are doing on their mediations.

Narrator:

All with the help a simple clip of hair. For WebMD, I'm Sandee LaMotte.

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