Feature Channels: AIDS and HIV

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The spending bill passed today is a welcome step forward. Allocations in the bill will strengthen public health and research efforts during the year ahead and will provide critical support for important goals. At the same time, the legislation in its final form also brings inadequate responses to current and urgent challenges with the potential for long-term and costly consequences.

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UCLA Health experts weigh in on the most significant healthcare advances of the last ten years and what exciting developments we can look forward to in the decade ahead.

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A drug purified and developed from the sap of a tree in the Amazon rainforest is now being studied for the treatment of chronic idiopathic diarrhea in non-HIV patients at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth) as part of a two-year pilot study.

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Nearly three-fourths of young adults experiencing homelessness who are raped do not seek post-sexual assault medical care, missing an opportunity to greatly reduce their risk of contracting HIV, according to a survey led by The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth).

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H.R. 3, the Elijah E. Cummings Lower Drug Costs Now Act passed by the House of Representatives today introduces critically needed and significant steps to reduce costs and improve access to life-saving therapies for conditions including HIV and hepatitis C. Importantly, the legislation also brings essential resources to combat antibiotic resistance, find and develop new infection fighting drugs and bring them to market. The balanced approach of this legislation will serve patients and public health.

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A common first-line treatment approach for cryptococcal meningitis in low-income countries is being compromised by the emergence of drug resistance, new University of Liverpool research warns.

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With a disproportionate number of black cisgender women in the U.S. becoming HIV positive, researchers are sharing critical health information through an atypical venue: the emergency room.

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This World AIDS Day marks a promising and unprecedented point in a quest begun nearly four decades ago to end the global public health threat of HIV through science and solidarity. Increasingly, effective and essential technologies, medicines and measures to effectively treat the virus and prevent transmissions are finding their way to where they are needed most and are demonstrating that we have what is needed to end this pandemic. For the first time, the United States has developed a plan aiming to end the American epidemic. And in keeping with hard-earned knowledge as well as with the theme of this World AIDS Day, communities are at the center of ambitious responses. Still, this World AIDS Day finds progress stalled by policies and politics that threaten the momentum we have gathered.

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The World Health Organization has set a goal of ending the AIDS epidemic by 2030.

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Virologist Eric Cohen and his team have identified a way to thwart HIV infection at its very early stages.

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Nearly 40 million people around the world are living with HIV, and experts believe about 20% do not know their status. In the U.S., more than 1 million people in the U.S. are living with HIV.

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Some primates can carry SIV, a virus resembling HIV, lifelong and yet not develop AIDS. They are able to repair SIV damage to intestinal mucous tissues and avoid escape of gut bacteria and other events leading to immune system exhaustion. The findings offer clues for new HIV treatments

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Penn Nursing has received a $100,000 grant from the Robert I. Jacobs Fund of the Philadelphia Foundation for HIV research. The grant supports an investigation, “Youth-driven Perspectives in HIV Biomedical Prevention and Cure Research,” led by José A. Bauermeister, PhD, MPH, Presidential Professor of Nursing.

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A UC Davis study found that Lactobacillus plantarum bacteria rapidly repaired damaged gut lining (known as leaky gut) in monkeys infected with chronic simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV), an HIV-like virus. It linked chronically inflamed leaky gut to the loss of PPARα signaling and damage to mitochondria.

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Rates of new anal cancer diagnoses and deaths related to human papillomavirus (HPV), the most common sexually transmitted infection, have increased dramatically over the last 15 years, according to researchers at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth). The results of their study will be published in the November issue of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

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American Journal of Public Health article sees heightened dangers for Hispanics/Latinos, and an urgent need for enhanced public-health response.

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A new study by researchers at the University of Montreal shows close to 172,000 Canadians injected drugs in 2016, up from 130,000 just five years earlier, but support varies.

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The success of antiretroviral therapies has extended the lives of people living with HIV, long enough for other chronic health conditions to emerge, including a recently documented uptick in sudden death.

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Preventing HIV in sex workers is a powerful tool in lowering the worldwide burden of the disease, and a new study could help ensure that high-risk women take advantage of medical safeguards.

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The University at Albany is now the home of an applied modeling center designed to aid the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and state and local public health organizations in developing, implementing and altering public health initiatives.

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In support of World Pneumonia Day, Nov. 12, the Forum of International Respiratory Societies (FIRS), of which the American Thoracic Society is a member, calls for an end to preventable pneumonia deaths, ensuring equitable access to interventions for prevention and control of pneumonia.

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Wistar scientists applied synthetic DNA-based technology to drive in vivo production of broadly neutralizing anti-HIV antibodies in small and large-animal models, providing proof of concept for a simple and effective next generation approach to HIV prevention and therapy. These results were published online in the Journal of Clinical Investigation.

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Below are summaries of recent Fred Hutch research findings with links for additional background and media contacts.

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To end the HIV epidemic in the US, the use of behavioral and social science research—combined with biomedical strategies—is essential, according to a series of new papers in JAIDS. The 15 article supplement was co-edited by two faculty members in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.

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An innovative study from the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing (Penn Nursing) used a youth-driven mystery shopper methodology to assess YMSM’s testing experiences in three metropolitan cities highly impacted by the HIV epidemic.

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HIV antiretroviral (ART) meds cannot completely eradicate the virus; it persists in immune cell “reservoirs.” Now scientists have discovered evidence that the initial use of ART alters the host environment to allow the formation or stabilization of most of the long-lived HIV reservoir.

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After a rigorous vetting process, Johns Hopkins University officials announced today their selection of Vines Architecture to lead the planning stages, known as a feasibility study, for a multidisciplinary building that will honor the legacy of Henrietta Lacks.

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More HIV testing will be available in the Chicago area, thanks to a five-year, $4.5 million federal public health grant recently awarded to the University of Chicago Medicine.

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As part of a massive national effort to improve and modernize flu shots, the Duke Human Vaccine Institute has received three research contracts from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), with an initial award of approximately $29.6 million in first-year funding.

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A nurse scientist at Case Western Reserve University is further expanding her research on aging-related health challenges increasingly faced by people living longer with HIV-AIDS.

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The ACSR has been renewed for five years with the George Washington University serving as the prime site.

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University of California San Diego School of Medicine researchers have identified a switch controlling HIV reproduction in immune cells which can eliminate dormant HIV reservoirs.

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Wistar was awarded two major grants totaling more than $12 million from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), part of the National Institutes of Health, to fund an international multidisciplinary clinical research consortium spearheaded by Wistar’s HIV Research Program.

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A new study published today in Nature Communications shows a promising alternative for those who have to take a daily pill regimen.

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Spending bills released by Senate Appropriations Committee Wednesday demonstrate encouraging recognition of some of the most urgent health challenges threatening individual and public health at home and abroad. At the same time, the bills fall short of the comprehensive commitments necessary to fully effective responses.

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The Senate Labor, Health and Human Services and Related Programs Appropriations subcommittee’s allocations of funding for the Ending the HIV Epidemic initiative in its proposed budget for 2020 represent a significant step toward an ambitious, critical, and achievable goal; however, lack of new resources to confront increasing rates of hepatitis C and sexually transmitted diseases with insufficient support for addressing opioid-related infectious diseases, falls far short of the response to these concurrent epidemics that is needed.

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Disparities in rates of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) and HIV between Black/African American and Hispanic/Latino adolescents and their white counterparts are well documented. Culturally and developmentally appropriate efforts targeted to help these youth establish healthy practices to lower their risk of sexually transmitted infections are warranted. However, such interventions present unique challenges in recruiting and retaining research participants.

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In a follow-up study conducted in South Africa, Johns Hopkins Medicine researchers say they have evidence that hospital emergency departments (EDs) worldwide may be key strategic settings for curbing the spread of HIV infections in hard-to-reach populations if the EDs jump-start treatment and case management as well as diagnosis of the disease. A report on the findings was published in August in EClinicalMedicine.

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Tuberculosis and HIV – two of the world’s deadliest infectious diseases – are far worse when they occur together. Now, Texas Biomedical Research Institute researchers have pinpointed an important mechanism at work in this troubling health problem. And, their discovery could lead to a new mode of treatment for people at risk.

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the Infectious Diseases Society of America, its HIV Medicine Association and the American Academy of HIV Medicine call for the establishment of antiretroviral treatment stewardship programs in hospital settings to support appropriate use of the drugs, to avoid the use of medicines that are incompatible with patients’ regimens, and to avert the development of treatment-resistant HIV.

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Below are summaries of recent Fred Hutch research findings, with links for additional background and media contacts.

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The San Diego Center for AIDS Research (CFAR) at University of California San Diego has been awarded planning grants to help the federal government achieve its goal of reducing the number of new HIV infections in the United States by 90 percent by 2030.

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The newest Professor at Texas Biomedical Research Institute, Mahesh Mohan, D.V.M., M.S., Ph.D., is an HIV researcher who focuses on what happens at the sub-cellular level when a person is infected with the virus that causes AIDS.

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A review of the autopsy reports of 252 men and women who died of acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) in New York City between 1984 and 2016 reveals several long-term trends in combatting the epidemic.

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For the first time in Southern California, surgeons at UC San Diego Health have transplanted the kidney of a deceased donor with HIV into a recipient with a pre-existing HIV infection. The procedure is part of an unprecedented multi-site national clinical trial.