preview

Cribier's Mistakes

Decent Essays

The condition of fingernails is often overlooked and, for some people, not something to be proud of. Nails are often dirty, chipped, uneven, or hidden under a fake nail. A lot can be learned about a person’s health just by looking at their nails. An important breakthrough of this discovery is the ability to determine whether a person has human immunodeficiency virus, or as it is better known, HIV. How can a serious disease be discovered by looking at a nail? It all lies on the lunula. The lunula is the white part of the fingernail or toenail. People who have been diagnosed with HIV have one thing in common: they have a disappearing lunula. The absence of the lunula is referred to as anolunula. There have been two studies done in the past 20 years that try to confirm whether examining …show more content…

This study consisted of 258 subjects; 155 were HIV positive and 103 were HIV negative. Cribier and his team observed the changes in the patient’s nails as the disease progressed. They concluded that of the 103 HIV positive patients, about 32 percent of them showed no change in the size of the lunula. Because of this conclusion, it was determined that not having a lunula was not an important factor in determining whether a person was HIV positive. Years later, another group of researchers decided to reopen the study. The second study was published in 2014 and led by Pratik Gahalaut. His study consisted of 336 subjects; 168 were HIV positive and 168 were HIV negative. In the first stage, about 33 percent of the patients showed signs of anolunula, whereas by the fourth stage, about 62 percent of the patients showed signs of anolunula. Gahalaut and his team concluded that the presence of the lunula diminished as the virus advanced through the stages. Gahalaut also made another important observation. He noticed that as people age, the lunula in our fingers disappear, with the exception of the thumb. This is a reason why the main focus is on the thumb in the hand and the big toe on

Get Access