Feature Channels: AIDS and HIV

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A team of researchers led by Wayne State University has been awarded funding as a part of the Adolescent Medicine Trials Network for HIV/AIDS Interventions, a research network devoted to the health and well-being of adolescents and young adults with HIV or at risk for HIV infection. The Wayne State team, led by Sylvie Naar, Ph.D., professor and division director of behavioral sciences in the Department of Family Medicine and Public Health Sciences at the Wayne State School of Medicine and associate director of the Pediatric Prevention Research Center, has been awarded an anticipated total of $15.7 million dollars over five years from the National Institute of Child and Human Development of the National Institutes of Health, for the project, Scale it Up.

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People under the age of 30 account for the majority of new HIV infections in the United States. This age group is also more likely than adults to own a smartphone. Recognizing adolescents’ connection with mobile technology, a research team at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, along with colleagues at Emory University, has secured $18 million in funding over the next five years from the National Institutes of Health to form the UNC/Emory Center for Innovative Technology or iTech.

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Discovery of a novel, advanced technique to identify the rare cells where human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) hides in patients taking antiretroviral therapy (ART). This is an important step forward in the search for a HIV/AIDS cure.

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A clinical trial underway – known as the AMP study (for Antibody Meditated Prevention) – will determine whether infusing an experimental antibody (VRC01) into HIV-negative men and transgender individuals who have sex with men, will prevent the acquisition of HIV.

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A new study from scientists at The Scripps Research Institute shows that “holes” in HIV’s defensive sugar shield could be important in designing an HIV vaccine.

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A series of new studies led by scientists at The Scripps Research Institute and the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative describe a potential vaccination strategy to jump-start the selection and evolution of broadly effective antibodies to prevent HIV infection.

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Dr. Jonathan Karn has been awarded the 2016 Drexel Prize in Translational Medicine by the Institute for Molecular Medicine and Infectious Disease at Drexel University College of Medicine in Philadelphia.

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Tuberculosis (TB) is the leading cause of death worldwide among people infected with HIV. But as yet, no test can reliably show when latent (inactive) TB infections in people with HIV starts progressing to active—and potentially fatal—TB disease. Now, a researcher at Albert Einstein College of Medicine has received a five-year, $3.7 million National Institutes of Health grant to identify biomarkers that signal an increase in activity by Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb), the bacterium that causes TB, in people with HIV.

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A study from Emory AIDS researchers shows how the expected disease severity when someone is newly infected by HIV reflects a balance between the virus' invisibility to the host's immune system and its ability to reproduce.

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Enrique del Castillo has been awarded $270,568 by the National Science Foundation to develop statistical methods that will improve the formulation and manufacturing of drugs used to treat some of the world’s deadliest diseases.

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People in Africa’s Sub-Sahara region, a relatively undeveloped area, are generally satisfied with their sex lives, with the most common rating — reported by 18 percent of survey respondents — being a perfect “10,” according to Baylor University research to be presented Monday, Aug. 22, at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association (ASA).

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Being homeless puts people at greater risk of HIV infection than those with stable housing, but targeting services to reduce risk behaviors is often complicated by fuzzy definitions of homelessness.

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Brooklyn, NY – SUNY Downstate Medical Center’s Special Treatment and Research (STAR) Program has been awarded $1.9 million in new grant funding from the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene to provide enhanced HIV prevention services throughout Brooklyn using the latest biomedical tools, Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP) and Post-Exposure Prophylaxis for HIV (PEP).

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CHAPEL HILL, NC –UNC School of Medicine’s Anne Lyerly is addressing the urgent need for effective HIV prevention and treatment for the estimated 1.5 million women worldwide with HIV who give birth each year. Lyerly, associate director of the UNC Center for Bioethics and associate professor of social medicine at the UNC School of Medicine, is also an obstetrician/gynecologist who studies ethically complex clinical and policy issues related to women’s reproductive health.

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Albert Einstein College of Medicine and Montefiore, in collaboration with the City University of New York (CUNY), have received a $9.4 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to lead research in Central Africa to improve clinical care and health outcomes for patients with HIV. The ongoing, five-country observational study, called Central Africa International Epidemiologic Databases to Evaluate AIDS (CA-IeDEA), involves more than 50,000 HIV-positive children and adults taking anti-retroviral therapy (ART).

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Mount Sinai Health System receives $420k for reducing HIV viral loads for VNSNY’s CHOICE SelectHealth Plan members

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One of the biggest challenges to discovering a cure for the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is when the disease becomes dormant — hidden and inactive within the human body. Modern therapy can practically wipe out the virus, but stores of latent HIV soon become active and multiply all over again.

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After fully sequencing the latent HIV “provirus” genomes from 19 people being treated for HIV, scientists at Johns Hopkins Medicine report that even in patients who start treatment very early, the only widely available method to measure the reservoir of dormant HIV in patients is mostly counting defective viruses that won’t cause harm, rather than those that can spring back into action and keep infections going.

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Whether an HIV-positive man has met cultural expectations of masculinity might impact how much stigma he experiences, according to a new study from Binghamton University, State University of New York.

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Mike Kent, a researcher in Sandia National Laboratories’ Biological and Engineering Sciences Center, is studying a protein called Nef involved in HIV progression to AIDS with the ultimate goal of blocking it. He and his collaborators have developed a new hybrid method to study this HIV protein that compromises the immune system. The method also could work on many other proteins that damage cellular processes and cause diseases.