All AIDS and HIV stories

Research reveals workings of anti-HIV drugs

404132862 — Fri, 16 May 2008 15:10:15 -0400

Using ingenious molecular espionage, scientists have found how a single key enzyme, seemingly the Swiss Army knife in HIV’s toolbox, differentiates and dynamically binds both DNA and RNA as part of the virus’s fierce attack on host cells. The work has been published in the journal Nature.

HOPE in African HIV/AIDS fight

404132862 — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 11:32:16 -0500

It was close to midnight one day this week in Durban, South Africa, when Harvard AIDS researcher Bruce D. Walker switched on his computer and made a visit to 104 Mt. Auburn St. in Cambridge.

Scientists may have identified new target for HIV vaccine

404132862 — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 16:31:41 -0500

By coaxing the HIV-1 protein to reveal a hidden portion of its protein coat, scientists at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School have provided a newly detailed picture of how protective, or so-called broadly neutralizing, antibodies block HIV-1 infection.

High rates of HIV infection documented among young Nepalese girls sex-trafficked to India

404132862 — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 16:10:12 -0400

A study by Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) researchers of girls and women who were sex-trafficked from Nepal to India and then repatriated has found that 38 percent were HIV positive. The infection rate exceeded 60 percent among girls forced into prostitution prior to age 15 years. One in seven of the study’s participants had been trafficked into sexual servitude prior to this young age.

Farmer, Magaziner: Get involved!

50443248 — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 13:25:36 -0400

Physician and medical anthropologist Paul Farmer and Ira Magaziner, a one-time policy adviser in the Clinton White House, brought humor, counsel, and cautions to a public conversation on student engagement Sept. 20.

Greeting them was a packed-to-the-ceiling John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum, where the crowd was noisy, young, and ready to laugh — egged on by Farmer’s explosive wit. Magaziner, measured and lugubrious, happily played the young doctor’s straight man.

Not that the panel was a laughing matter. With audience questions included, it was a 90-minute look at global health challenges and related avenues for student activism.

Youngest girls spirited to brothels show highest HIV rates

50443248 — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 16:58:17 -0400

Girls forced into the Indian sex trade at age 14 or younger show significantly higher rates of HIV infection than older girls and women similarly forced into prostitution, according to a new study that highlights for the first time the increased HIV risks faced by sex trafficked Nepalese girls and women.

The study showed that 60 percent of girls forced into the Indian sex trade when they were as young as age 7 were infected with HIV — the virus that causes AIDS. That compared with relatively lower rates for older teens aged 15 to 17, 40 percent of whom were infected with HIV, and women, age 18 to 32, 31 percent of whom were infected with HIV.

Battling AIDS in Brazil: A message of hope

50443248 — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 16:25:42 -0400

An upbeat conference on AIDS?

Hard to imagine, unless you'd attended "The Brazilian Response to AIDS" on March 22, sponsored by the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies.

True, Brazil has had its share of AIDS deaths, but they are far less than expected in the early days of the epidemic. In the early 1990s, the World Bank predicted that by the year 2000, there would be 1.2 million people in Brazil infected with HIV. But by 2005, there were only 600,000 infected, and the death rate from AIDS has been stabilized at 6.3 per 1,000. Moreover, people living with AIDS receive far more effective, compassionate, and consistent care in Brazil than in almost any other country in the developing world.

Noninfectious pathway for HIV found by HSPH team

Tue, 10 Jul 2007 16:39:28 -0400

HIV is a crafty virus. It attacks the body by invading and taking over the very cells meant to protect humans from infection. Hiding within cells such as macrophages and lymphocytes, the virus uses the body's natural machinery to replicate itself, destroying the immune system and leaving patients open to a range of debilitating and deadly opportunistic infections.

Now, a team led by Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) researchers has described a previously unappreciated pathway used by HIV to enter macrophages and has shown that the virus, once in the cells through this entryway, doesn't appear to replicate. Rather than causing infection, the virus is destroyed, and an immune response may be triggered.

Spray-dry vaccine for TB developed

Wed, 11 Jul 2007 10:47:14 -0400

Bioengineers and public health researchers have developed a novel spray-drying method for preserving and delivering the most common tuberculosis (TB) vaccine. The low-cost and scalable technique offers several potential advantages over conventional freezing procedures, such as greater stability at room temperature and use in needle-free delivery. The spray-drying process could one day provide a better approach for vaccination against TB and help prevent the related spread of HIV/AIDS in the developing world.

Past, present of flu pandemics examined

50443248 — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 12:25:53 -0400

The global response to bioterrorism and AIDS is increasing health system capacity in a way also useful if avian flu strikes, according to experts attending an interdisciplinary conference on Asian flus.

The bad news, however, is that vast disparities in health care systems still persist and, despite the expanding capacity in recent years, bird flu could still have a devastating impact.

"I think of what happens if avian flu comes to Lesotho. The mortality and morbidity would just be devastating," said Jim Kim, who heads Harvard Medical School's Department of Social Medicine and serves as the Francois-Xavier Bagnoud Professor of Health and Human Rights in the Harvard School of Public Health.

Exercise boosts health of HIV-infected women

Thu, 12 Jul 2007 16:41:57 -0400

Betsy Lincoln felt pregnant all the time. Loss of muscle tone in her face, arms, and legs made her look so bad, she didn't want to leave her apartment. She had little strength or endurance. Lifting one of her children or climbing a flight of stairs exhausted her.

Lincoln (not her real name) is representative of many of the estimated 250,000 women in the United States infected with HIV (human immunodeficiency virus), or the deadly AIDS it causes. And that number is rising. In this country, most of the women are minorities and poor, with limited access to medical care. Recent research also suggests that they may be at increased risk for heart disease. Even the drugs they take to keep their infection under control can cause unwanted changes in body fat and loss of energy.

Study: Hope alive for AIDS vaccine

Fri, 13 Jul 2007 10:35:21 -0400

Researchers from the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School (HMS) have prompted human immune cells to attack HIV protein fragments, showing that the long-sought vaccine to protect against AIDS is still a possibility.

Researchers using advanced data-analysis programs identified five protein fragments from HIV - the virus that causes AIDS - that promote a strong immune response from the cells of people who have never been exposed to the HIV virus before.

That means, researchers said, that creation of a vaccine to protect unexposed individuals from infection with HIV appears possible. Researchers conducted their study using fragments from HIV-1, the more virulent of the two strains known to cause AIDS.

For 20 years, scientists have fought the disease and sought ways to prevent the AIDS virus from devastating patients' immune systems. It is the virus's destruction of the body's immune response that opens patients to a variety of opportunistic infections that run rampant and, ultimately, cause death.

Researchers had thought that human immune system cells don't fully recognize the HIV-1 virus and so can't eliminate it from the body after infection. The new study shows that isn't the case and suggests shifting efforts toward creating a vaccine aimed at uninfected individuals.

The study, published in the online journal Medical Immunology, was led by Dana-Farber's Pedro Reche, an instructor in medicine at HMS, and by Derin Keskin, a research fellow in medicine at HMS.

"It has been unknown for 20 years why HIV-1 becomes persistent and isn't cleared from the bodies of AIDS patients," says Medical Immunology's editor, Kendall Smith, chief of the Division of Immunology at Weill Medical College at Cornell University. "This study suggests that in HIV-positive people, the immune system cells that respond to HIV-1 are either deleted or have lost the ability to recognize and home in on major parts of the virus."

If these findings hold true in follow-up studies, they suggest that exposing healthy people to HIV-1 proteins might train their immune system to attack the virus and prevent them from developing AIDS if exposed to HIV-1 in the future, Reche said.

Senior author of the study is Professor of Medicine Ellis Reinherz, of Dana-Farber and Harvard Medical School. Other co-authors, all of Dana-Farber and Harvard Medical School, are Rebecca Hussey, research associate in pathology; Petronela Ancuta, research fellow in pathology; and Professor of Neurology Dana Gabuzda.

Study offers new hope for preventive vaccine for AIDS

70652986 — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 06:27:37 -0400

New research by Dana-Farber Cancer Institute scientists suggests that it may one day be possible to immunize healthy individuals against HIV-1, the virus that causes AIDS.

In a study published in the online journal Medical Immunology, investigators led by Dana-Farber's Pedro Reche, Ph.D., and Derin Keskin, Ph.D., upend the long-held view that human immune system cells do not fully recognize HIV-1 following infection, and thus are unable to eliminate it from the body. The researchers found that lab-grown immune system cells from uninfected individuals are able to distinguish and respond to key HIV proteins. Cells taken from infected individuals, by contrast, were much less responsive to the virus.

If these findings hold true in follow-up studies, they suggest that exposing healthy people to HIV-1 proteins might train their immune systems to attack the virus and prevent them from developing AIDS if exposed to HIV-1 in the future, Reche said.

The research was funded in part by grants from the National Institutes of Health.

Broad vision required to fight HIV

50443248 — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 09:49:15 -0400

A major new public health campaign focused on AIDS is needed in the wake of the World Health Organization's "3 by 5" campaign, which forced a new approach to fight the deadly disease, according to a former WHO official instrumental in the 3 by 5 program.

Jim Yong Kim, a Harvard Medical School associate professor who now heads Brigham and Women's Hospital's Division of Social Medicine and Health Inequalities, said the adoption of the 3 by 5 program in 2003 by WHO and the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) shifted the emphasis from AIDS prevention to a massive program to treat 3 million people with powerful anti-retroviral drugs by the end of 2005.

Drug prevents spread of genital herpes

50443248 — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 15:21:22 -0400

A new type of treatment has been found to protect mice against a nasty strain of herpes virus common in humans. Because this genital virus is an important co-factor for the transmission of AIDS, the discovery could lead to inexpensive protection against the ongoing epidemic that will kill more than 3 million people this year.