HIV/AIDS in small cities in Midwest Santa Catarina, south of Brazil: Clinical and epidemiological aspects, opportunistic infections.

Introduction: We avaluated the clinical features, epidemiology, opportunistic infections and coinfections of HIV/AIDS patients.

Methods: We analyzed the records of 143 patients receiving antiretroviral therapy at a public center in the Midwest of Santa Catarina, south of Brazil, from December 2014 to September 2015.

Results: Most were male, Caucasian, married, with low education level, and aged 31-50 years.

The use of placebos in phase III clinical trials in Brazil.

In 2008, Brazil's Federal Council of Medicine [Conselho Federal de Medicina] (CFM)--regulatory and supervisory agency on the ethical practice of medicine--banned the participation of Brazilian doctors in studies using placebos for diseases with efficient and effective treatment. This position differs with the Helsinki Declaration, which allows the use of placebos in methodologically justified conditions. To ascertain whether the CMF's ethical regulation modified the use of placebos in phase III clinical trials in Brazil, characteristics of the records in ClinicalTrials.

[The Brazilian Society of Tropical Medicine and ethics in human research in Brazil].

The author retrieves the history of the Code of Community Rights, a pioneering ethical document within Brazil that was approved in 1986 by the Brazilian Society of Tropical Medicine and which deals with protection for communities and human rights in research involving human populations, especially those that are socially and culturally vulnerable.