[Current status of HIV infection in Yunnan Province of China]

In cooperation with the Chinese Academy of Preventive Medicine and Yunnan Province Provincial Office for AIDS Control and Prevention, we studied the current status of HIV infection intravenous drug users (IVDUs) and other high risk groups in Yunnan province of China. As of the end of 1995, 1,807 HIV cases were officially reported (Positive rate was 0.6%), of which 1,278 (77.9%) were IVDUs, and 24 were their spouses. The majority of cases were found among the Dai minority male farmers near Ruili which borders on Myammar, but HIV also appears to be spreading among the Han people. HIV antibody positive rates among commercial sex workers, pregnant women and blood donors were 0.2%, 0.07% and 0.04%, respectively. A system for surveillance of HIV has been developed, but preventive strategies to cope with HIV epidemic are not sufficient. As HIV/AIDS is now a global issue, (1) the integration and coordination of such preventive strategies in cooperation with community health workers, (2) general health education for condom use promotion and (3) care of psychological vulnerable person such as IVDUs, should be developed.

Serum cholesterol and mortality in a Japanese-American population: the Honolulu Heart program

The authors have examined the relation of baseline serum cholesterol level to subsequent 9-year mortality in a cohort of Japanese-American men. The baseline serum cholesterol level was positively related to coronary heart disease mortality. It was inversely related to total cancer mortality and to mortality from cancers of the esophagus, colon, liver and lung and to malignancies of the lymphatic and hematopoietic system. When mortality in the first two years after examination was removed from consideration in an attempt to allow for existing clinical or subclinical disease, the inverse relation to cancer persisted but was statistically significant only for colon cancer and lung cancer among the common sites as well as for malignancies of the lymphatic and hematopoietic system. When known prevalence cases of cancer were eliminated from the computation, the inverse relation between cholesterol level and cancer mortality persisted significantly only for colon among the common cancer sites. The relation of baseline serum cholesterol level to total mortality in this cohort was quadratic; that is, there was an excess of deaths associated with serum cholesterol level at the high end of the distribution (mainly due to coronary heart disease) and at the low end (mainly due to cancer).