GMHC PRESENTS

If you are as frightened of that severe new strain of staph which is hitting gyms and sex clubs, promiscuous people--hell--even my sister's kids' school in a Philly suburb sent out a warning about it--you may wanna attend this free GMHC forum. Or at least google it and read reports from it. A friend's face swelled up like a basketball after contracting it from a houseguest who used his nose hair clippers!

A Community Forum on MRSA: What We All Need to Know

Tuesday, February 5, 2008 6:00 pm to 7:30 pm GMHC The Tisch Building 119 West 24th Street – 12th floor New York, NY

A drug-resistant bacteria MRSA (Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) which is a skin infection occurring in persons of all genders, races, ages and sexual orientations, has been found among gay men, and other men who have sex with men in New York City, San Francisco and Boston.

Learn more about the effects of MRSA on gay men and our communities overall in New York City and what we can do. This forum is free and open to the general public.

Guest speakers:

Bill Stackhouse, PhD, Institute for Gay Men’s Health, GMHC

Melissa A. Marx, PhD, MPH, Epidemiologist & Director, Antibiotic Resistance Unit, Bureau of Communicable Disease, New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene

Duane Smith, MD, Clinical Director—Rogers Unit, Center for Special Studies, New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell

For more information, please contact the GMHC Hotline at 1-800-243-7692 or visit www.gmhc.org


And while we're on the subject of health, I was in Atlanta this weekend and read an interesting article in the gay mag Southern Voice which delves into drug interaction precautions. The kind which probably caused Heath Ledger to die. I'm guilty of mixing self-prescribed drugs myself, so this really caught my. It gives some useful examples of interaction precautions which I was not aware of, so maybe you'll find them helpful too. I knew that you shouldn't mix Viagra and poppers, but I had no clue that St. John's Wort (an herb used to treat depression) affects HIV medications or that ecstacy and cocaine used together can traumatize the heart.

Here's a teaser:

Whether they’re taking club drugs, HIV medications or sleeping pills, a good number of gay men fancy themselves as at-home pharmacologists. In smaller doses, drug use indeed equips a person with a certain knowledge of how a substance interacts with his or her body, said Petros Levounis, director of the Addiction Institute of New York.

But the confidence that comes from casual drug use can leave people unaware of, and unprepared for, the potentially dangerous ways different chemicals are processed in their body simultaneously, Levounis said.
“The biggest thing we’re seeing is the issue of synergy,” Levounis said, describing instances of one drug plus another drug equaling the effects of three.

READ THE REST: SOTHERNVOICE.COM