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Will HIV Vaccine Advances Become Mired in Ethics and Risk-Group Refusals?
14 07 2010 Scientists have isolated human antibodies which succeeded at preventing the infection of human cells with more than 90 percent of HIV strains. But will ethical concerns about the research prevent its advance?
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Zambia court awards damages in HIV screening test case
04 06 2010 Ex-officers in Zambia's air force were fired after discovering they were HIV-positive without informed consent prior to the HIV testing.
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Religious groups pledge to end AIDS stigma
25 03 2010 Religious groups from around the globe pledged Tuesday to prevent the stigmatization of people living with HIV and AIDS, in a joint statement welcomed by a senior U.N. official as a sea change in attitudes.
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University of Michigan Scientists Identify Reservoirs Where HIV-Infected Cells Can Lie in Wait
08 03 2010 University of Michigan scientists have identified a new reservoir forhidden HIV-infected cells that can serve as a factory for newinfections. Targeting these reservoirs of latent cells may open a door to new treatments.
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Man Appears Free of HIV After Stem Cell Transplant
03 09 2009 A 42-year-old HIV patient with leukemia appears to have no detectableHIV in his blood and no symptoms after a stem cell transplant from adonor carrying a gene mutation that confers natural resistance to thevirus that causes AIDS, according to a report published Wednesday inthe New England Journal of Medicine.
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A New Call to Defeat the AIDS Virus
03 09 2009 Scientists at major medical centers in the United States, the drugindustry and AIDS advocates are calling for a new research effort todefeat, once and for all, the viral infections that have caused theglobal AIDS epidemic that kills more than 2 million people each yearworldwide, despite the antiviral drugs that are keeping other millionsalive even now.
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FDA Approves Inexpensive Female Condom
03 09 2009 Female Health Co has won U.S. approval to market its newer, lessexpensive female condom, which could help it win over American women aswell as boost use in developing countries, the company said onWednesday.
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A Policy Cocktail for Fighting HIV
03 09 2009 Nearly 30 years after the first cases were recognized in the UnitedStates, HIV/AIDS remains an incurable disease that is devastating largeswaths of our country and the rest of the world. To understand themagnitude of the destruction, look around our nation's capital. Lastmonth, D.C. health officials announcedthat 3 percent of city residents had full-blown AIDS or were infectedwith HIV. Not only is that infection rate on a par with rates in someAfrican countries, but the D.C. data were based only on those who havebeen tested for HIV; the actual rate is probably much higher.
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New advances on the long road to the development of an AIDS vaccine
03 09 2009 AIDS Vaccine Day, May 18, marks the occasion in 1997 when U.S. President Bill Clinton challenged researchers to come up with an AIDS vaccine within the following decade, stating that such a vaccine was the only way to eliminate the threat of AIDS. Twelve years later, the goal of an effective HIV vaccine remains unfulfilled, but the need for one remains urgent. AIDS is the number four killer in the world and number one in sub-Saharan Africa. Despite education and prevention campaigns, every day 7,500 people become infected with HIV. Antiretroviral drugs can prolong the lives of those who are infected, but they are not cures, and because of their cost and logistical difficulties, they reach only a minority of those who need them. And for every two individuals who go on antiretroviral treatment, five become HIV infected. As with any major viral pandemic, a vaccine remains the best hope of ending, and not just mitigating, AIDS.
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New Non-Drug Fix for HIV?
03 09 2009 Researchers are slowly establishing a connection between an extremely rare genetic disease and HIV -- and homing in on a safe, non-prescription compound that could treat both. Recently, James Hildreth at the Meharry Medical College School of Medicine in Nashville, Tenn., and his colleagues found that cells affected by Niemann-Pick Type C (NPC), which disrupts cholesterol trafficking, were unable to release HIV, suggesting these cells would not spread the virus. These findings, published May 27 in the Journal of Virology, are rooted in a hypothesis Hildreth has explored for a long time: that "cholesterol is somehow essential" to HIV, he said. For instance, HIV-1 relies on specialized structures known as lipid rafts, which are rich in cholesterol, to infect new cells.
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Time for a Scientific Code of Ethics
03 09 2009 In the light of recent high-profile scandals one researcher has asked: Just how common is scientific misconduct? And her conclusions are worrying. Daniele Fanelli of the University of Edinburgh conducted the first meta-analysis of surveys questioning scientists about their misbehaviours. The results suggest that altering or making up data is more frequent than previously estimated and might be particularly high in medical research. There have been previous estimates based on indirect data (for example, official retractions of scientific papers or random data audits) which have produced largely discrepant results. Many researchers have asked scientists directly, with surveys conducted in different countries and disciplines. However, they have used different methods and asked different questions, so their results also appeared inconclusive.
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International Development Minister Urges Firms to Pool HIV Patents
03 09 2009 Drug companies should give up their patent rights to HIV medicines to help prevent the deaths of millions of people in poor countries, a British government minister will say this week. The international development minister, Mike Foster, will call on pharmaceutical companies to put lives before profits, as the all-party parliamentary group on Aids publishes a report this week detailing the scale of the "treatment timebomb". By 2030, they estimate, 50 million people will need new drugs, which are currently prohibitively expensive, to keep them alive.
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South Africa Is Seen to Lag in H.I.V. Fight
03 09 2009 ORANGE FARM, South Africa Young men have flocked by the thousands to this clinic for circumcisions, the only one of its kind in South Africa. Each of them lies down on one of seven closely spaced surgical tables, his privacy shielded only by a green curtain. Ive done 53 in a seven-hour day, me, myself, personally, said Dr. Dino Rech, who helped design the highly efficient surgical assembly line at this French-financed clinic for cutting off foreskins.
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AIDS Relief and Moral Myopia
03 09 2009 Public-health specialists working on AIDS in Africa are fond of invoking ignorance. It is a term assigned to any local attitude that stands in their wayfrom the cool reception Africans have given condoms to the lingering doubt in many African societies that sexual activity is the essential cause of AIDS.
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Youth HIV, Pregnancy on Rise
03 09 2009 Mississippi is among the top states in the nation in the spread of HIV and AIDS among pre-teens to young adults, as well as pregnancies in the same age groups, according to recent statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
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AIDS-like disease in chimps may be a 'missing link'
03 09 2009 Scientists have discovered that chimpanzees in Tanzania are falling ill and dying from an AIDS-like disease -- a surprising finding that could lead to insights into the illness and, perhaps, to a vaccine.
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Washington Supports Exchange of Needles
03 09 2009 City officials on Friday called on Congress not to reinstate a ban that prevented the nations capital from using local money to distribute clean needles to drug users.Until 2007, when the ban was lifted, Washington was the only city in the country forbidden by Congress from using both local and federal tax dollars to distribute clean needles to drug addicts. The capital has one of the fastest-growing H.I.V. and AIDS problems in the country
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Hepatitis Group Is Harassed in China
03 09 2009 In the realm of potential threats to Chinas stability, an organization that advocates on behalf of people infected with hepatitis B would seem to be low risk.But on Wednesday, the groups director, Lu Jun, found himself squaring off against four security officials who were trying to cart away stacks of literature they claimed had been printed without official permission.
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Scientists find new strain of HIV
03 09 2009 Gorillas have been found, for the first time, to be a source of HIV.Previous research had shown the HIV-1 strain, the main source of human infections, with 33m cases worldwide, originated from a virus in chimpanzees.But researchers have now discovered an HIV infection in a Cameroonian woman which is clearly linked to a gorilla strain, Nature Medicine reports.
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