Mathematicians Reach Breakthrough In HIV Research
Here’s a great real world example of why math is important kids! From the Wall Street Journal:
Scientists using a powerful mathematical tool previously applied to the stock market have identified an Achilles heel in HIV that could be a prime target for AIDS vaccines or drugs.
The research adds weight to a provocative hypothesis—that an HIV vaccine should avoid a broadside attack and instead home in on a few targets…
UN Asks The World To Put An End To AIDS By 2020
With numerous research groups inching closer to a cure for AIDS, the United Nations asks that leaders throughout the world end the pandemic by 2020. While one of the largest problems in the spread of AIDS is the lack of knowledge about the disease and access to treatment in certain areas, there is also a lack of funding to facilities that are on a progressive path towards a cure, but are stopped because of finances. The Christian Post reports:
World leaders must do everything in their power to end the AIDS pandemic by 2020, the U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has said at the U.N. Summit on AIDS in New York.
“Today, we gather to end AIDS,” Ban said as the United Nations General Assembly opened on Wednesday.
The three-day summit is being held as the world marks the 30th anniversary since HIV was first discovered. Ban told delegates gathered from across the world…
‘Berlin Patient’ May Be First Man Cured Of AIDS
From CBS via Radio Television Caraibes reports:
A 45-year-old man now living in the Bay Area may be the first person ever cured of the deadly disease AIDS, the result of the discovery of an apparent HIV immunity gene.
Timothy Ray Brown tested positive for HIV back in 1995, but has now entered scientific journals as the first man in world history to have that HIV virus completely eliminated from his body in what doctors call a “functional cure.”
Brown was living in Berlin, Germany back in 2007, dealing with HIV and leukemia, when scientists there gave him a bone marrow stem cell transplant that had astounding results.
“I quit taking my HIV medication the day that I got the transplant and haven’t had to take any since,” said Brown, who has been dubbed “The Berlin Patient” by the medical community.
Brown’s amazing progress continues to be monitored by doctors at San Francisco General Hospital and at the University of California at…
Drugs Help ‘Reduce’ HIV Transmission
HIV-1 particles assembling at the surface of an infected macrophage.
BBC News reports:
An HIV-positive person who takes anti-retroviral drugs after diagnosis, rather than when their health declines, can cut the risk of spreading the virus to uninfected partners by 96%, according to a study.
The United States National Institutes of Health sampled 1,763 couples in which one partner was infected by HIV.
It was abandoned four years early as the trial was so successful. The World Health Organization said it was a “crucial development”.
The study began in 2005 at 13 sites across across Africa, Asia and the Americas.
HIV-positive patients were split into two groups. In one, individuals were immediately given a course of anti-retroviral drugs. The other group only received the treatment when their white blood cell count fell.
Both were given counselling on safe sex practices, free condoms and treatment for sexually transmitted infections. Among those immediately starting anti-retroviral therapy there was only one…
Clinic Mistake Exposes Patients To HIV and Hepatitis
Photo: Andrew Magill (CC)
It’s difficult to hear your doctor say you have cancer. It’s even more difficult to hear how his nurse used the same needle for 2 months before using it to take your blood. Sky News reports:
More than 50 cancer patients will have to wait an agonising three months to find out whether they have been infected with HIV, after a NSW clinic used one needle on patients for two months.
The bungle occurred when a newly employed nurse mistakenly believed the Accu-Chek Multiclix, a device used to check blood sugar levels, automatically changed needles.
Dr. Michael Jones, chairman of the private radiology company PRP Diagnostic Imaging which runs the Gosford clinic, said the nurse didn’t realise she had to change the needle manually for each new patient.
Instead, the needle was left unchanged between November 28 and January 28, and used on 53 patients and two staff members.
The patients had visited…
Rwanda To Run Vasectomy Campaign To Curb Population Growth
Photo: Rwanda soilders singing anti-AIDS songs. All soilders are counseled and tested for HIV.
An interesting tactic in controlling population growth, but how does one come up with a slogan for a campaign supporting both vasectomies and HIV prevention? Stop the spread of disease and babies? BBC News reports:
Rwanda’s government has said it wants to encourage men to have vasectomies in a bid to stem the small landlocked country’s growing population.
It would be done along with its HIV prevention campaign to encourage all men to be circumcised.
Health officials would take the opportunity to talk to men about the birth-control method at the same time.
A BBC reporter in Rwanda says vasectomies are uncommon in the country and the move may meet resistance.
[Continues at BBC News]
The Promiscuous Life of Julian Assange
Should we be concerned with Assange’s sex life? Is it deserving of the media attention or is it taking away from what WikiLeaks’ leaks? Via Daily Mail:
The two women who say they were sexually assaulted by the WikiLeaks editor Julian Assange would never have complained to police if he had agreed to take an HIV test, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.
WikiLeaks’s Swedish co-ordinator, who worked closely with Mr Assange for months, said in an exclusive interview that he repeatedly begged his boss to have the test, both to head off the possible police investigation and for Mr Assange’s own peace of mind, given his promiscuous sex life.
‘The two women told me, that if he goes to the clinic for an HIV test, then we won’t go to the police,’ said Mr Assange’s colleague, who wishes to remain anonymous because he is a witness in the case brought by Swedish…
HIV Cured By Stem Cell Transplant
The first person ever successfully cured of HIV, thanks to the miracle of stem cells? Aidsmap reports:
Doctors who carried out a stem cell transplant on an HIV-infected man with leukaemia in 2007 say they now believe the man to have been cured of HIV infection as a result of the treatment, which introduced stem cells which happened to be resistant to HIV infection.
The man received bone marrow from a donor who had natural resistance to HIV infection; this was due to a genetic profile which led to the CCR5 co-receptor being absent from his cells. The most common variety of HIV uses CCR5 as its ‘docking station’, attaching to it in order to enter and infect CD4 cells, and people with this mutation are almost completely protected against infection.
The “Berlin patient,” Timothy Ray Brown, a US citizen who lives in Berlin, was interviewed this week by German news magazine Stern.
His course of treatment…
Daily Pill Helps Prevent HIV Infection
While this pill would be an amazing achievement helping to reduce the spread of HIV, even the volunteers in the trial couldn’t remember to take it everyday. The best prevention of HIV is the knowledge of how it is transmitted and how ways to prevent it. From BBC News:
A daily pill to prevent HIV infection would be a significant development. A trial published in the New England Journal of Medicine suggests that an established treatment for HIV infection is also powerful in protecting gay men from catching the virus.
This is not, however, the answer to the nearly 30 year epidemic of HIV and AIDS. Since it is just one trial, many more studies will need to follow. But according to the Terrence Higgins Trust (THT) it is “potentially very significant and could change the HIV landscape in the future”.
Some brief facts about the trial: it involved about 2,500 men at…
Pope Says Condoms Sometimes Permissible to Stop AIDS
Philip Pullella reports in Reuters:
VATICAN CITY — The use of condoms to stop the spread of AIDS may be justified in certain cases, Pope Benedict says in a new book that could herald the start of sea change in the Vatican’s attitude to condoms.
In excerpts published in the Vatican newspaper on Saturday ahead of the book’s publication next week, the pope cites the example of the use of condoms by prostitutes as “a first step toward moralization” even though condoms are “not really the way to deal with the evil of HIV infection.”
While some Roman Catholic leaders have spoken in the past about the limited use of condoms in specific cases to stop the spread of HIV/AIDS as a lesser of two evils, this is the first time the pope has mentioned the possibility himself in public.
The Vatican newspaper unexpectedly published significant excerpts from the book on Saturday night, days before…
20% of Gay Men Are HIV-Positive
Wow – that’s really high. Worse, half of them don’t know it, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control in this report from TIME:
Recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) show that 1 in 5 sexually active gay and bisexual men in America are HIV-positive but that 44% of them don’t know it.
More than 8,000 self-identifying gay and bisexual men (or, as the researchers call them, MSM, for men who have sex with men) were tested by CDC workers in the 21 American cities with the highest infection rates. The gay population in Baltimore had the highest rates of HIV infection, at 38%, while Atlanta scored lowest, at 6%.
The highest absolute number of infections occurred in white MSM…
If HIV Was In Monkeys For Years, Why Didn’t We Get It?
Neil Katz poses the question for CBS News:
The precursor to H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS, may be older than you think. Way older.
According to new research, simian immunodeficiency virus (S.I.V.) has been in monkeys for millennia, potentially putting humans at risk for the last 32,000 years and possibly much longer.
And yet, for all that time, humans didn’t get sick in mass. Only in the 20th century did H.I.V. become a global scourge that has claimed 25 million lives.
Why?
According to the New York Times, for as long as monkeys have had S.I.V., humans who have butchered them have put themselves at risk of infection from a mutated form. But because the infected people in Africa were fairly isolated, the chances for an epidemic were small. That changed, some theorize, with the explosive growth of African cities and wide spread use of cheap syringes.
But the reality is, no one really knows…
A Cure For HIV And AIDS
A cure may not be so far from reality, as reported by ABC News:
For years, human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) researchers have shied away from the whole notion of a cure, largely because evidence showed the virus can persist even under intensive treatment.
But now, they are — tentatively — expressing a renewed interest in the idea.
That interest is sparked by clinical data showing an apparent cure in a single case and some technical advances that make it easier to track very low levels of HIV infection, experts said at the International AIDS Conference here.
But progress is hampered by lack of money for research in the field and by what one prominent researcher called “fundamental gaps” in the understanding of how HIV and the human body interact…
[continues at ABC News]
Discover of New Antibody Takes Step Forward Towards AIDS Vaccine
The progress made recently in HIV and AIDS research seems to have taken the media by storm. With advancements such as earlier treatment in HIV and AIDS patients, and a vaginal gel found to decrease the risk of infection, it appears we’re a step closer towards vaccination. The most recent breakthrough with the discovery of three new HIV antibodies gives hope to scientists that a vaccine will be found. Drew Halley of SingularityHub reports:
Will HIV eventually go the way of smallpox and polio? Earlier this month, scientists at the National Institute of Health (NIH) announced their discovery of three new HIV antibodies, the most powerful of which neutralizes 91% of all HIV strains. These are the strongest antibodies yet found, and they could hold the key to developing a vaccine to AIDS.
HIV antibodies themselves aren’t rare, and scientists regularly find ones that are effective against a few different strains. But until last year, the most powerful…
True Blood For African Addicts
At what point do people need a fix so bad that they are willing to inject another person’s blood into themselves? With the constant presence of AIDS related deaths in Africa, and the progressive educational-outreach towards sex workers and addicts, it would seem a foolish thought. BBC reports:
Desperate heroin users in a few African cities have begun engaging in a practice that is so dangerous it is almost unthinkable: they deliberately inject themselves with another addict’s blood, researchers say, in an effort to share the high or stave off the pangs of withdrawal.
The practice, called flashblood or sometimes flushblood, is not common, but has been reported in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, on the island of Zanzibar and in Mombasa, Kenya.
It puts users at the highest possible risk of contracting AIDS and hepatitis. While most AIDS transmission in Africa is by heterosexual sex, the use of heroin is growing in some cities, and…
HIV ‘Bombs’ Latest Afghanistan Hazard
I’d suggest taking this report with a pinch of salt as it comes from the notorious Murdoch-owned British tabloid The Sun, but one has to admit, it’s scary if true:
Taliban fighters are burying dirty needles with their bombs in a bid to infect British troops with HIV, The Sun can reveal.
Hypodermic syringes are hidden below the surface pointing upwards to prick bomb squad experts as they hunt for devices.
The heroin needles are feared to be contaminated with hepatitis and HIV. And if the bomb goes off, the needles become deadly flying shrapnel. The tactic, used in the Afghan badlands of Helmand, was exposed by Tory MP and ex-Army officer Patrick Mercer.
Senior backbencher Mr Mercer said yesterday: “Are there no depths to which these people will stoop? This is the definition of a dirty war.”…
[continues in The Sun]
Health Care Insurer Assurant, Targeted HIV Patients to Drop Coverage
Talk about a terrible name regarding these circumstances … “Assurant” Health? Why purchase health insurance in the first place if this can happen? Murray Waas writes on Reuters:
WASHINGTON — In May 2002, Jerome Mitchell, a 17-year old college freshman from rural South Carolina, learned he had contracted HIV. The news, of course, was devastating, but Mitchell believed that he had one thing going for him: On his own initiative, in anticipation of his first year in college, he had purchased his own health insurance.
Shortly after his diagnosis, however, his insurance company, Fortis, revoked his policy. Mitchell was told that without further treatment his HIV would become full-blown AIDS within a year or two and he would most likely die within two years after that.
So he hired an attorney — not because he wanted to sue anyone; on the contrary, the shy African-American teenager expected his insurance was canceled by mistake and would be reinstated once he set the company straight.
But Fortis, now known as Assurant Health, ignored his attorney’s letters, as they had earlier inquiries from a case worker at a local clinic who was helping him. So Mitchell sued.
Man Appears Free of HIV After Stem Cell Transplant
Jacquelyne Froeber writes on CNN:
A 42-year-old HIV patient with leukemia appears to have no detectable HIV in his blood and no symptoms after a stem cell transplant from a donor carrying a gene mutation that confers natural resistance to the virus that causes AIDS, according to a report published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
“The patient is fine,” said Dr. Gero Hutter of Charite Universitatsmedizin Berlin in Germany. “Today, two years after his transplantation, he is still without any signs of HIV disease and without antiretroviral medication.”
The case was first reported in November, and the new report is the first official publication of the case in a medical journal. Hutter and a team of medical professionals performed the stem cell transplant on the patient, an American living in Germany, to treat the man’s leukemia, not the HIV itself.
However, the team deliberately chose a compatible donor who has a naturally…
Scientists Crack HIV/AIDS Puzzle
Potentially big news, via Reuters:
Scientists say they have solved a crucial puzzle about the AIDS virus after 20 years of research and that their findings could lead to better treatments for HIV.
British and U.S. researchers said they had grown a crystal that enabled them to see the structure of an enzyme called integrase, which is found in retroviruses like HIV and is a target for some of the newest HIV medicines.
“Despite initially painstakingly slow progress and very many failed attempts, we did not give up and our effort was finally rewarded,” said Peter Cherepanov of Imperial College London, who conducted the research with scientists from Harvard University.
The Imperial and Harvard scientists said that having the integrase structure means researchers can begin fully to understand how integrase inhibitor drugs work, how they might be improved, and how to stop HIV developing resistance to them…
[continues at Reuters]
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