Feature Channels: AIDS and HIV

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As a step toward designing the first effective anti-HIV vaccine, scientists are reporting new insights into how a family of rare, highly potent antibodies bind to HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, and neutralize it — stop it from infecting human cells. They described the antibodies, which were isolated from people infected with HIV and can neutralize a wide range of HIV strains, today at the 244th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society, the world’s largest scientific society.

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A team of disease experts and health economists at Johns Hopkins warns that steadily declining rates of U.S. infant male circumcision could add more than $4.4 billion in avoidable health care costs if rates over the next decade drop to levels now seen in Europe.

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An international team of researchers has found that certain bioactive components found in human milk are associated with a reduced risk of HIV transmission from an HIV infected mother to her breast-fed infant. Their study will be published in the August 15 online edition of American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

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In the year since the UAB emergency department began offering HIV screening for all patients ages 19-64, part of a CDC initiative, doctors say 20,000 tests were performed and 72 cases of HIV infection were diagnosed.

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Adults with HIV in rural sub-Saharan Africa who receive antiretroviral drugs early in their infection may reap benefits in their ability to work and their children's ability to stay in school, according to a first-of-its-kind clinical study in Uganda that compared socioeconomic outcomes with CD4+ counts—a standard measure of health status for people with HIV.

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Researchers from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have published pioneering research showing that a drug used to treat certain types of lymphoma was able to dislodge hidden virus in patients receiving treatment for HIV.

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Population-wide levels of HIV virus dropped substantially between 2011 and May 2012 in a rural part of southwestern Uganda, the site of two community health campaigns led by doctors at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center (SFGH) and Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda.

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In January, 2012, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued new guidelines on dosing of an HIV medication used to treat people infected with both HIV and tuberculosis (TB) because of a potential interaction between two of the main drugs used to treat each disease.

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A clinical study in a remote region of southwest Uganda has demonstrated the feasibility of using a health campaign to rapidly test a community for HIV and simultaneously offer prevention and diagnosis for a variety of other diseases in rural and resource-poor settings of sub-Saharan Africa.

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An ongoing clinical study in rural Uganda, begun in 2011, suggests that many people infected with HIV/AIDS would take antiretroviral drugs if they were available to them—even before they developed symptoms from the disease.

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Tens of thousands of Americans taking potent antiretroviral therapies, or ART, to keep their HIV disease in check may not have as much control over the viral infection as previous estimates have suggested, according to results of a study by AIDS experts at Johns Hopkins and the University of Pennsylvania.

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The percentage of HIV patients taking antiretroviral drugs who experienced the full benefit of the drugs jumped from 45 percent of 72 percent during the past decade, a figure that is lower than previous estimates. The findings, considered important for HIV prevention efforts, since patients whose virus is in tight control are less likely to transmit the infection to others, are published this week in JAMA by a team of researchers led by the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

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Researchers from the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) and Makerere University in Uganda have used hair and blood samples from three-month old infants born to HIV-positive mothers to measure the uninfected babies’ exposure—both in the womb and from breast-feeding—to antiretroviral medications their mothers were taking. The results, they said, are surprising.

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A new initiative, the Collaboration for HIV/AIDS Immunological Therapy (CHAIT), will be announced at the HIV Functional Cure Symposium in Washington DC, preceding the international AIDS conference, the premier gathering for those working in the field of HIV.

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The advent of combination antiretroviral therapy in 1996, and patients’ success using the drugs in managing HIV, led to diminished interest in research towards a cure for a number of years.

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It's been a good week forHIV/AIDS breakthroughs. Tuesday, the FDA approved Truvada. Now, a research team has developed a long-lasting injection that could someday replace the daily regimen of pills faced by patients.

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New research into behavioral health prevention and treatment of HIV/AIDS shows that involving couples and families may be more effective than treating individual patients. A special issue of the American Psychological Association journal Couple and Family Psychology: Research and Practice includes articles that reveal how interventions for couples and families may have more impact in both preventing the spread of HIV and its consequences. The authors are available to discuss their findings before and during the XIX International AIDS Conference in Washington, D.C., July 22-27

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The XIX International AIDS Conference is coming to Washington, D.C., July 22-27. It is the first time in 22 years the conference will be held in the U.S.

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A Johns Hopkins expert in the drug treatment of HIV disease and AIDS is spearheading an international effort to radically shift the manufacturing and prescribing of combination therapies widely credited in the last decade for keeping the disease in check for 8 million of the 34 million infected people worldwide.

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Sub-Saharan Africa accounts for 69 percent of HIV cases worldwide and 72 percent of AIDS deaths. A study published in The Journal of Pain showed that pain is highly prevalent among well functioning HIV patients in Africa, has a debilitating impact of quality of life, and there is a significant level of unmet need for pain relief.

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An investigation led by UCSF has found that the risk of female-to-male HIV transmission is increased three fold for women with bacterial vaginosis, a common disorder in which the normal balance of bacteria in the vagina is disrupted.

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A two- or three-drug combination given within 48 hours of birth to infants born of HIV-positive mothers can reduce the risk of intrapartum HIV acquisition by about half, compared to AZT alone.

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Although breastfeeding is attributed to a significant number of HIV infections in infants, most breastfed babies are not infected with HIV, despite prolonged and repeated exposure. HIV researchers have been left with a conundrum: does breast milk transmit the virus or protect against it? New research from the University of North Carolina School of Medicine explores this paradox in a humanized mouse model, demonstrating that breast milk has a strong virus killing effect and protects against oral transmission of HIV.

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It seems logical that programs to screen and manage depression in pregnant, HIV-positive Medicaid patients should already be in place, but they aren't.

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26.7 percent of homeless adults tested and surveyed in downtown Los Angeles' skid row were infected with the hepatitis C virus (HCV) — more than 10 times the 2 percent rate among the general U.S. population. 46.1 percent of them were unaware that they were infected. Four percent were HIV-positive.

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A new study may help clarify why some people infected with HIV are better able to control the virus. It may also pinpoint a target for treatment during early HIV infection aimed at increasing the supply of certain immune cells in the gut.

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Study finds superinfection may be as common as initial HIV infection and is not limited to high risk-populations.

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The expanded use of antiretrovirals has been linked to significant decreases in hospital mortality rates among severely ill HIV-positive patients nationwide, according to a new study

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Potentially severe hypersensitivity reactions to the anti-HIV drug abacavir occur through an autoimmune mechanism, resulting from the creation of drug-induced immunogens that are attacked by the body's immune system, according to a study published online by the journal AIDS, official journal of the International AIDS Society. AIDS is published by Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, a part of Wolters Kluwer Health.

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In a comprehensive, 10-year UCSF study, researchers found patients with HIV/AIDS suffered sudden cardiac death at a rate four times higher than the general population.

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A drug that has been shown to prevent HIV infection in a significant number of cases must be combined with behavioral approaches if the U.S. health care establishment is to succeed in reducing the spread of the virus, according to the American Psychological Association.

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Who's Positive, a national HIV awareness organization, today announced the results of a year-long online survey measuring support for over-the counter (OTC) HIV testing. The organization will present these results at the upcoming U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Blood Products Advisory Committee (BPAC) on May 15, 2012.

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A long-term follow-up analysis of participants in the Step Study, an international HIV-vaccine trial, has confirmed that certain subgroups of male study participants were at higher risk of becoming infected after receiving the experimental vaccine compared to those who received a placebo. The vaccine used in the study did not contain the HIV virus, but it did contain HIV genes which were delivered to cells using a vector that employed a type of cold virus known as adenovirus serotype 5 (Ad5).

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New center to address HIV epidemic in addition to training new investigators and conducting international research.

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In a groundbreaking study published last year, scientists reported that effective treatment with HIV medications not only restores health and prolongs life in many HIV-infected patients, but also curtails transmission to sexual partners up to ninety-seven percent. However, a new study by UCSF scientists shows that lack of basic living needs severely undercuts these advances in impoverished men.

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New research finds that early weaning – stopping breastfeeding before six months – is of little, if any, protective value against HIV transmission nor is it safe for infant survival.

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Preliminary data hint at how extracts from the tree, abundant in tropical and subtropical areas, may stop the virus from multiplying

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Biostatisticians developed a new tool to address one of the big problems slowing progress toward universal access to antiretroviral therapy for AIDS in developing nations. It helps to prioritize laboratory-based CD-4 cell count testing and allocate resources to the patients who need them the most.

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Expanding on previous research providing proof-of-principal that human stem cells can be genetically engineered into HIV-fighting cells, a team of researchers have now demonstrated that these cells can actually attack HIV-infected cells in a living organism.

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Anal cancer is on the rise among HIV-positive women, according to a Montefiore Medical Center study entitled, “High Prevalence of High Grade Anal Intraepithelial Neoplasia in HIV-Infected Women Screened for Anal Cancer,” to be published in the Journal of Aids on May 1.

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Women who have been infected by two different strains of HIV from two different sexual partners – a condition known as HIV superinfection – have more potent antibody responses that block the replication of the virus compared to women who’ve only been infected once. These findings, by researchers at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, are published online March 29 in PLoS Pathogens.

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New research from the University of Adelaide shows why the development of a cure and new treatments for HIV have been so difficult for scientists to crack.

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In a four-year study, funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Minority AIDS Research Initiative, researchers will conduct and evaluate an HIV/AIDS anti-stigma related intervention among 10 African-American congregations in rural Alabama. The overall goal of the project, “Faith-Based Anti-Stigma Intervention Toward Healing HIV/AIDS,” or Project FAITHH, is to decrease both individual and community-wide stigma in these congregations.

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Mount Sinai School of Medicine researchers have discovered that marijuana-like chemicals trigger receptors on human immune cells that can directly inhibit a type of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) found in late-stage AIDS.

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Research done by Australian scientist Jack da Silva, PhD, and published in the March issue of the journal GENETICS, suggests that even in early infection, when the virus population is low and has reduced genetic variation, HIV rapidly evolves to evade immune defenses and treatment.

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Physical violence, sexual abuse and other forms of childhood and adult trauma are major factors fueling the epidemic of HIV/AIDS among American women. Scientists have known for years that traumatized women are at greater risk of becoming infected.

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A common sexually transmitted bacterial infection more than doubles the risk of HIV infection in African women, according to a study by researchers at RTI International.

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A national team of AIDS experts at Johns Hopkins and elsewhere say they are surprised and dismayed by results of their new study showing that the yearly number of new cases of HIV infection among black women in Baltimore and other cities is five times higher than previously thought. The data show that infection rates for HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, among this population are much higher than the overall incidence rates in the United States for African-American adolescents and African-American women.

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This is the first to demonstrate that the biological mechanism that keeps the HIV virus hidden and unreachable by current antiviral therapies can be targeted and interrupted in humans, providing new hope for a strategy to eradicate HIV completely.