Poverty is perhaps the most important factor in whether inner-city heterosexuals are infected with the AIDS virus, according to the first government study of its kind.

The study, released Monday, suggests that HIV is epidemic in certain poverty-stricken urban neighborhoods. And, more significantly, poor heterosexuals in those neighborhoods were twice as likely to be infected as heterosexuals who lived in the same community but had more money.

Federal scientists found that race was not a factor - there were no significant differences between blacks, whites or Hispanics.

Health officials have long believed poverty drives HIV epidemics, but there have been few studies to back that up. Some research actually contradicts that belief: Studies in Tanzania, Kenya and some other African countries actually found that wealthy people were more likely to be infected than the poor.

"In the United States, we haven't have a history of looking in depth at the association between poverty and HIV," said Dr. Jonathan Mermin, director of HIV/AIDS Prevention for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Mermin oversees the CDC team that did the new study.

More often, studies have focused on the race of HIV patients, their sexual orientation, or whether or not they use intravenous drugs.

The CDC report was released at the international AIDS conference in Vienna.

The study involved a survey in 2006 and 2007 of 9,000 heterosexual adults, ages 18 to 50. They answered questions on a computer about their income, condom use and other details and were given HIV tests.

The research was done in high-poverty neighborhoods in 23 U.S. cities. It focused on heterosexuals who don't use intravenous drugs; that group accounts for about 28 percent of Americans living with HIV. It did not involve gay or bisexual men, who have the highest rates of HIV in the United States.

The results: HIV was detected in 2.4 percent of the people who were living below the federal poverty line, which in 2007 was an annual income of roughly $10,000 or less for an individual. The 2.4 percent translates to roughly 1 in 42 people.

In contrast, infections were found in 1.2 percent of people in the same neighborhoods who made more money than the federal poverty guideline. That's 1 in 83 people.

Both rates were higher than the national average, which is 0.45 percent, or 1 in 222 people.

The results suggest that people in low-income neighborhoods are more likely to be infected because they live among more people who are infected. Perhaps more people in such neighborhoods have used illegal drugs or had other experiences that put them at higher risk, Mermin said.

"It's epidemiological bad luck," he said. He described the situation: "I'm in a community where when I meet a new (sexual) partner, the chance that they would have HIV is much higher than if I were wealthy and living in another geographical area."

Officials need to start looking at the AIDS epidemic in a different light, said Dr. Carlos del Rio, who chairs global health studies at Emory University's school of public health.

"You talk about 'Can we decrease the HIV burden in the United States?' I would say, 'What can we do to decrease poverty in the United States?'" del Rio said.

He noted there are diseases that are more prevalent in certain racial groups, for genetic reasons. Sickle cell disease, which is most prevalent in blacks, is one example.

But there's no clear biological reason why the infection rate is eight times higher in blacks than whites, and three times higher in Hispanics than whites. But understanding that blacks are disproportionately poor probably does explain why the rates are higher, del Rio said.

He was an author of a smaller, recent study that found that 60 percent of Atlanta's HIV cases were located in a downtown area of the city with high proportions of blacks, IV drug users and people living in poverty.

An estimated 1 in 272 Americans is infected with HIV, according to 2006 estimates. In other terms, more than 1.1 million Americans are living with the AIDS virus. The number has grown since 2006, CDC officials believe.

Officials believe the annual number of new HIV infections has been hovering around 55,000 a year since the late 1990s.

A new research by Medical College of Georgia has shown that black tea contains higher concentrations of fluoride than previously thought.

'The additional fluoride from drinking two to four cups of tea a day won't harm anyone; it's the very heavy tea drinkers who could get in trouble,' said Dr. Gary Whitford, Regents Professor of oral biology in the School of Dentistry.

Most published reports show 1 to 5 milligrams of fluoride per litre of black tea, but a new study shows that number could be as high as 9 milligrams.

Fluoride is known to help prevent dental cavities, but long-term ingestion of excessive amounts could cause bone problems.

Whitford discovered that the fluoride concentration in black tea had long been underestimated when he began analysing data from four patients with advanced skeletal fluorosis, a disease caused by excessive fluoride consumption and characterized by joint and bone pain and damage.

'When we tested the patients' tea brands using a traditional method, we found the fluoride concentrations to be very low, so we wondered if that method was detecting all of the fluoride,' Whitford said, noting that the tea plant, Camellia sinensis, creates a quandary when measuring fluoride.

Unique among other plants, it accumulates huge concentrations of fluoride and aluminium in its leaves. When the leaves are brewed for tea, some of the minerals leach into the beverage.

AIDS experts gather in Vienna on Sunday for a six-day rally on the new options emerging in a war which after nearly three turbulent decades is entering a stable, promising phase.

Expected to draw more than 20,000 researchers, policymakers and grassroots workers, the International AIDS Conference is the 18th since acquired immune deficiency syndrome came to light in 1981.

For almost all this time, the conferences have been the theatre for frustration and sometimes anger. Doctors would reel off the latest setbacks in the quest to treat and prevent the AIDS virus, while activists pounded the drum for money and action by Big Pharma.

Today, though, the mood is brighter than ever. Indeed, many AIDS warriors are talking cautiously of a foe that is on the way to being contained and one day will be rolled back.

"One day, we will have to turn our minds on how to wipe out the virus," Jean-Francois Delfraissy, director of France's National Agency for AIDS Research (ANRS), said in an interview.

The optimism comes from the success of antiretroviral drugs, the "cocktail" of drugs that, like a boot pressed firmly on the throat of a killer, keeps HIV suppressed.

For millions, this medication has transformed the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) from a death sentence to a chronic but manageable disease.

Even better, antiretrovirals are also emerging as a policy tool for prevention. Lowering viral levels to below perceptible levels massively reduces the risk of handing on the pathogen between sex partners or from a pregnant mother to her child.

There is also hugely encouraging news about male circumcision for preventing the spread of HIV to men, and even a few glimmers of hope from the lab, where scientists are toiling for a vaccine and virus-thwarting microbicide gel.

"We really are at an important crossroads," Gottfried Hirnschall, new director of HIV/AIDS at the UN's World Health Organisation (WHO), said in an interview.

"It's all coming together. We no longer have this treatment-versus-prevention conversation. The question now is about making the best of the resources we have, and in the most intelligent way."

Many terrible problems remain, Hirnschall cautioned.

More than 33 million people live with the virus and each year 2.7 million more cases of HIV occur. Stigma, ignorance and discrimination, in many places, are entrenched. Millions of poor, needy people have yet to clutch the drug lifeline.

To help them, a key question in Vienna is how to finetune the use of antiretrovirals and mesh them with low-cost medical support, using nurses or medical orderlies as substitutes for doctors.

Doctors may be advised to start prescribing anti-HIV drugs at an earlier stage of infection, a tactic that would save more lives and, say some, be a cost-saver too, as healthy people are more productive for longer.

Yet does the world have the will, at a time of belt-tightening, to foot the bill for treating people sooner?

This year, 25 billion dollars has to be mustered for fighting AIDS in poorer countries, according to a UNAIDS estimate. So far, there is a funding shortfall of 11.3 billion, according to an analysis published last week in the US journal Science.

That means a 2006 vow by UN members to provide "universal access" to HIV drugs, prevention, treatment and care by the end of 2010 is set to become one more headline-making political promise that fell flat.

"The success of ARVs (antiretrovirals) made it so people think HIV is no longer there," said Julio Montaner, director of the BC Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS in Vancouver, Canada, and president of the International AIDS Society, which is organising the conference.

"Politicians basically react on a short-term agenda. Since HIV treatment became effective, people are not under the same pressure that they used to be."

The Vienna conference will also turn the spotlight on Eastern Europe, where the epidemic is being driven especially by intravenous drug users.

Russia and Ukraine, the two hotspots of infection, are under pressure to scrap policies that criminalise drug users and to encourage needle-exchange programmes and help to wean addicts off heroin by using methadone, a safer substitute for opiates.

The swine flu situation continues to be serious in the four southern states and Maharashtra, which have reported 319 of the 330 H1N1 infections in the last one week, while a boy died of the virus in New Delhi.

Swine flu has [photo gallery] claimed 17 lives across the country since July 5 and Kerala, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu continue to be the worst affected states, according to official figures. According to the health ministry, both Maharashtra and Kerala reported eight deaths each while one was reported from Andhra Pradesh. Kerala had the highest number of 178 confirmed reports of swine flu. Maharashtra follows with 91 cases while Karnataka has 19, Andhra Pradesh 18, and Tamil Nadu 13. The number of infections are, however, lower than the previous week as 370 cases were reported between June 28 and July 5.

The infection was reported from the eastern part of the country for the first time this week with seven cases in West Bengal. The national capital received a jolt with a death being reported due to swine flu. At least seven cases have been reported from New Delhi since June 10. "There have been seven cases since June 10, but all patients have picked up the infection from out of Delhi," a health official said.

One death was reported from Ram Manohar Lohia hospital Friday. "The last case was of the boy from Ghaziabad who died in a Delhi hospital but he had got the infection from out of Delhi," the official said, adding that the government was fully prepared to deal with the H1N1 virus.

Since the outbreak of swine flu in May last year, India has recorded 33,783 cases of the disease so far while a total 1,624 deaths have been reported.

Diabetics of the world, rejoice.

That daily shot of insulin may soon be a thing of the past.

Scientists at the National Immunology Institute, New Delhi, led by its director Dr Avadhesha Surolia, have developed a new form of insulin which can could maintain normal blood sugar levels for over 120 days.

The insulin currently available can do this for a maximum of 18 hours, forcing diabetics to take at least one injection daily to sustain their sugar levels. With this new product, they can now restrict their shots to once every four months.

Dr Surolia said the new product was based on the principles of 'protein folding', and could release insulin molecules in a controlled and sustained manner for over 120 days.

"The just above basal level of human insulin released in a sustained manner has been found to be effective in not only controlling the upsurge in the level of blood glucose after meals, but also in preventing the dreaded early morning hypoglycaemia, which is caused by low glucose levels," he was quoted as saying.

The team has already patented the technology and transferred it to a US-based company for fine-tuning and clinical trials, and the product is likely to be in the market in about six years.

"It is a multi-million dollar technology transfer agreement with royalties once the product goes to the market and if I am not wrong it is one of the biggest scientific innovations to have come from a government-owned research laboratory," Dr Surolia said.

Once it arrives, the technology has a ready-made market in the country of its birth.

India is known as the diabetes capital of the world, with an estimated 50 million diabetics in the country.