The End of the Road

Well folks, we've come to the end of our blogging journey this week. I have to admit, when we first started this assignment I was a little bummed that I was stuck with blogging when I felt I could get a much more hands on experience talking with a pen pal or in the chat room. Attending the infected panels changed my mind about that for one. It is hard to ask people incredibly personal questions about HIV because your not sure how they will take it. Furthermore, the blogging experience has helped shaped my inquiry methods. The lax guidelines for our postings has made it so that we can research and find answers to any questions or hypothesis we had about HIV. More often I find myself researching into things that I wonder about in everyday life.

Did You Know...???

Its Spring Time, and that means allergy season! As if I don't enjoy my pollen covered car enough, I'm even more thrilled with my bouts of sneezing attacks and sinus inflammation. So this got me thinking, does HIV have any effect on allergies or vice versa? You would think, the HIV would increase the sensitivity of allergens as allergies themselves are an over reaction of the immune system to false antigens (i.e dust). On the other hand, could an allergic reaction be too much for a suppressed immune system to handle?

In an article in POZ magazine in 2008 thanks to antiretroviral medications, sinus problems are no longer a life and death matter. Untreated allergies that can lead to sinusitis can sometimes mean that bacteria or another virus begins to reproduce in the sinuses once they are congested. There are no significant studies that show that HIV people suffer from more sinus infections than HIV negative people, especially with the use of ARTs.

Reference:

-web: Spring Awakening: HIV, Allergies, and Sinusitis. April 2008. POZ magazine. Retrieved 4/9/10 from, http://www.poz.com/articles/hiv_allergies_sinuses_401_14336.shtml.