tagged w/ HIV/AIDS
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A doubling of new HIV infections in the UK in the past decade is leading experts to tell GPs to offer testing to all adult male patients in some areas.
Health Protection Agency data shows new UK-acquired cases rose from just under 2,000 in 2001 to nearly 3,800 in 2010.Men who have sex with men remain the group most at risk of becoming infected with HIV. New diagnoses in this group alone have increased by 70% in the past 10 years. There are more than 30,000 men who have sex with men living with HIV in the UK and experts estimate nearly a third of these are currently undiagnosed and unaware that they are infected.Another high risk group that would benefit from increased HIV testing, according to NICE, is the black African community living in England. In 2009, more than 2,000 black Africans were diagnosed with an HIV infection; one-third of all new diagnoses in the UK.Routine testing for HIV should be offered to all patients, regardless of age or ethnic background, who are registering with a GP, taking a blood test or being admitted to hospital in these areas, NICE says. The aim is to avoid stigmatising the groups with the highest incidence of the disease – gay men and black Africans.The lifetime cost of treating someone with HIV is almost £320,000 and the HPA says the NHS could have saved £1.2 billion if all 3,780 cases infected in the UK in 2010 had been prevented.There were 65,319 people known to be living with HIV in the UK in 2009. However, surveillance of blood samples given in hospital tests for other conditions suggests the true number living with the virus was 86,500.
Sources: The Independent and BBCA doubling of new HIV infections in the UK in the past decade is leading experts to... more
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Seventy New York City public school students came together on February 4th at a workshop hosted by Media Impact in an effort to improve their school communities.
The youth, students at the Urban Assembly Academy of Civic Engagement (CIVIC) and the Urban Assembly School of Business for Young Women (SBYW), are part of Media Impact’s My School – My Community program to engage students in creating critical conservations about issues in their schools.
My School – My Community is an innovative approach to learning that directly and actively engages students. Through hands-on exploration, students learn to effectively use creative storytelling and media to catalyze change and mobilize action about critical issues affecting their schools. After six months of independent work, the students from both schools came together today for the first time to share ideas about producing and broadcasting serial dramas in their schools.
“We were thrilled to have all of the students in one room,” said Media Impact Program Officer, Katie Bartels. “What these kids are doing for their schools is truly amazing. They are leading a process that has the potential to change the school culture.”
The workshop included several interactive stations to reinforce students’ skills prior to the launch of their broadcasts next months. Working with Media Impact staff and volunteers – including a professional actress and scriptwriter -- students learned about scriptwriting, acting, editing video and audio clips, developing campaigns and hosting a radio talk show.
http://3blmedia.com/theCSRfeed/New-York-City-Youth-Tackle-School-Culture-through-Communications-CampaignSeventy New York City public school students came together on February 4th at a... more
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The drug whoonga is said to be so addictive that users are hooked within days of starting to smoke it. Whoonga is a mixture of rat poison, detergent and marijuana and the key ingredient - crushed antiretroviral (ARV) medication prescribed to people with HIV - which is smoked in a joint to get high.Demand for the substance has prompted a massive wave of thefts of Aids drugs across the country.The street-value of the powder is ca 30 rands (about £3) per packet.Not only is the drug extremely toxic and has lead to the death of scores of addicts across South Africa during the past year, it is also leading to the death of innocent HIV patients. Because the ARV drugs are the essential to the concoction scores of Aids patients are being robbed of their antiretroviral drugs every week - some even being killed for their lifesaving ARV drugs. Sithenjwa Nyawose, an ANC councillor in Durban, said: "The patients are being mugged for their drugs. They are violently attacked in the streets as they leave the clinics."In Johannesburg, a police officer was implicated this month in a cartel that has targeted health clinics to steal ARVs.Doctors say the prescription medication does not contain anything that could deliver a "high", even when smoked.The country's Treatment Action Campaign, an Aids lobbying group, has described the belief that the drugs have recreational value as a "myth".The drug whoonga is said to be so addictive that users are hooked within days of... more
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AIDS is a plague allowed to happen
AC360
By Larry Kramer, Special to CNN
January 14, 2011 1:20 p.m. EST
Editor's note: Watch "Hope Survives: 30 Years of AIDS," an AC360° special, at 9pm ET Friday. Larry Kramer co-founded Gay Men's Health Crisis and founded ACT UP, an activist organization that has campaigned for treatments for HIV/AIDS. His play, "The Normal Heart," about the early years of AIDS and directed by Joel Grey, will be produced on Broadway by Daryl Roth and will star Joe Mantello; it will also be filmed next summer starring Mark Ruffalo and directed by Ryan Murphy. "The American People," his novel about the history of homosexuals in America, will be published by Farrar Straus and Giroux. Kramer, whose partner is David Webster, is HIV+ and the recipient of a liver transplant.
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New York City (CNN) -- I want this article to break your heart. But it deals with a subject that has had a tough time of it in the break-everyone's-heart department. I'll bet that a number of you will be more angry at me than sympathetic by the time you finish reading it. If indeed you finish reading it.
From its very beginning, most people have not wanted to know the truths about AIDS. This is an indisputable fact that continues until this very minute. I have been on the front lines since Day 1, so I know what I'm talking about.
Here are 10 realities about AIDS, and I've learned them the hard way:
1. AIDS is a plague -- numerically, statistically and by any definition known to modern public health -- though no one in authority has the guts to call it one.
2. Too many people hate the people that AIDS most affects, gay people and people of color. I do not mean dislike, or feel uncomfortable with. I mean hate. Downright hate. Down and dirty hate.
3. Likewise, both people who don't have sex the way they do (if they have it at all) and people who take drugs in order to feel better in a world that they find wretched are considered two highly expendable populations by the powerful forces that control this world.
4. AIDS was allowed to happen. It is a plague that need not have happened. It is a plague that could have been contained from the very beginning.
5. It is a plague that is not going to go away. It is only going to get worse.
6. There is no cure and the amount of money expended toward finding one is pathetically small, miniscule, puny, and totally indicative of a system and a government and a country and a world that does not want to end this plague.
7. There is no incentive for pharmaceutical companies to find a cure since they are making billions selling, at highly inflated prices, the many anti-viral drugs that those infected must consume -- drugs that only keep us living but still infected just enough to continue to possibly still infect others.
8. Educational campaigns, indeed all attempts at prevention, have been too stupid, useless, lily-livered, and nicey-nicey to accomplish much of anything.
9. There is no one of any use really in charge of this plague, in America or anywhere else in the world -- and it is a worldwide plague by now -- and this lack of decent, responsible and humane leaders has been so since its beginning in 1981. They lie to us. I consider most of those who have been or are in charge as equal to murderers.
10. One out of every five men who have sex with men in America is now HIV-positive, and more than 50% of gay men do not know it. Doctors in Chelsea say the statistics for that New York neighborhood have jumped from one out of five to one out of four. At the rate things are going, almost all gay men in America could be HIV-positive, which a lot of people would really like to see happen.
These are appalling statistics, appalling statements, appalling facts, and yet no one responds to them when I raise them. Why should they? Too many people want too many other people dead, and it is fearful and as we continue to see over and over, often dangerous to confront them.
30 years of HIV -- Three men reflect
Governments and bureaucrats and presidents and politicians and the people who run this world lie to people. They tell us HIV is under control. They tell us case numbers are decreasing. They tell us that all is being done that can be done. They tell us HIV is too complicated to eradicate. They tell us gay people and people of color have made more progress than ever before. These are all lies.
We must not believe them. How could we when, in one place or another:
-- They also tell us we can't get legally married.
-- They also tell us that we cannot legally adopt children.
-- They also tell us religions will not recognize us.
-- They also tell us we can't serve our country yet.
-- They also tell us our real history cannot be taught in schools.
-- They also tell us that gay students cannot organize in schools.
-- They also tell us that people who murder us are not committing hate crimes.
-- They also tell us we cannot insure our partners.
-- They also tell us our partners are not legal.
-- They also tell us we cannot have equal opportunities.
-- They also tell us we can't kiss each other or hold each other's hands in public.
-- They also tell us that our Supreme Court doesn't want to know about any of this, doesn't want to make us free and equal, doesn't want to honor the Bill of Rights.
If you want to know why AIDS is a plague, I have just told you why.
I could add a thousand more "they also's." I could expound and expand and add so many facts and figures to the above they'd put you to sleep. I helped start the two major AIDS organizations in America. I have watched almost everyone I once knew die.
For some 30-plus years, I have been trying to tell the world where this plague came from and why, and I will continue to do so until I die, too.
You see, I simply can't get the memories and the ghosts of just about every friend I had out of my life. And since there is no doubt in my mind that this plague of HIV/AIDS that took them from me was and continues to be allowed to happen, I am duty bound to tell this hideous history as best and as fully as I can. It's the least I can do.
That is correct: This plague of HIV/AIDS was intentionally allowed to happen. It still is. Nothing has changed in the intentionality department. Hate has a way of hanging around forever and too often winning out in the end.
The opinions in this commentary are solely those of Larry Kramer.AIDS is a plague allowed to happen
AC360
By Larry Kramer, Special to CNN
January... more
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Meet Dan, a new dad who's joining tentogether.org, a movement making massive impact for orphans thru no individual effort
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3I1If-cilKEMeet Dan, a new dad who's joining tentogether.org, a movement making massive... more
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The purpose of the trip is described in this brief video. Thanks for watching. You can read more below. We now know of over 10,000 kids who need a champion. This trip is for me to go meet more of them so I can share their stories with you.
http://travelwithfvi.blogspot.com/2011/01/returning-to-africa-today.htmlThe purpose of the trip is described in this brief video. Thanks for watching. You can... more
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By Sarah Grainger, BBC
In a modest breeze-block house in a village in Guatemala’s chilly and damp Western highlands, Aura Garcia tunes her small radio every Saturday morning to 93.7FM Radio Arco Iris which broadcasts the soap opera ‘El Intruso’ (the Intruder).
Aura is 17-years-old and a member of one of Guatemala’s indigenous Maya communities, which make up over half of the country’s population but whose members mostly live in poor, rural areas. Her mother tongue is Mam and she dresses in the traditional blouse and skirt of the Maya, heavily embroidered with a rainbow of bright colors.
For over a year Aura has been faithfully listening to the radio show and following the stories of Yon Maycol, a womanizing tuk-tuk driver and his girlfriend, Inocencia, wily Felipe and studious Lesly, the daughter of a single mother.
Like any soap opera, there is intrigue, romance and conflict. But ‘El Intruso’ carries important public health messages as well. Yon Maycol, the local Lothario who has spent time in the US, is persuaded to take an HIV test before he begins dating his latest girlfriend Inocencia. Felipe woos Lesly who knows little about contraceptives and ends up pregnant, as her mother had done. In later episodes Felipe discovers he is HIV positive, develops AIDS and eventually dies from pneumonia.
To read more of this story, please visit: http://mediaimpact.org/news2.htmlBy Sarah Grainger, BBC
In a modest breeze-block house in a village in... more
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A new kind of experimental HIV medicine can halt one of the earliest stages of HIV infection and may lead in future to a novel class of drugs to fight other dangerous viruses, German scientists said on Wednesday.
http://www.indiareport.com/India-usa-uk-news/reuters/Health/68701A new kind of experimental HIV medicine can halt one of the earliest stages of HIV... more
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World AIDS Day comes amid progress, concern
By the CNN WIre Staff
December 1, 2010 2:32 a.m. EST
A giant red ribbon hangs on the White House for observance of World AIDS Day.
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
* The estimated number of children with HIV/AIDS in 11 Asian countries increases 46 percent
* The UN says the number of new HIV infections has dropped 20 percent in the past decade
* But the number of new HIV infections outpaces the number of people starting treatment
(CNN) -- As the global community commemorates World AIDS Day on Wednesday, international health organizations report both promising and sobering trends.
While the United Nations says new HIV infections have declined by almost 20 percent worldwide over the past decade, the estimated number of children living with HIV or AIDS in 11 Asian countries has increased by 46 percent between 2001 and 2009, the World Health Organization's South-East Asia office said Wednesday.
"In 2001, an estimated 89,000 children were living with HIV/AIDS," said Vismita Gupta-Smith, public information and advocacy officer for WHO's regional office in New Delhi, India. "In 2009, there are an estimated 130,000 children living with HIV infection," including recent HIV infection, advanced HIV infection and AIDS.
The 11 countries in the region are Bangladesh, Bhutan, North Korea, India, Indonesia, Maldives, Myanmar, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Timor-Liste.
But a report by a United Nations program released last month shows some encouraging news, including drops in AIDS-related deaths and new HIV cases.
Data from the 2010 global report by the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) shows that an estimated 2.6 million people became newly infected with HIV, compared with the estimated 3.1 million people infected in 1999.
Also in 2009, approximately 1.8 million people died from AIDS-related illnesses, compared with the roughly 2.1 million in 2004, according to UNAIDS.
Among young people in 15 of the most severely affected countries, the rate of new HIV infections has fallen by more than 25 percent, led by young people adopting safer sexual practices, according to UNAIDS.
"We are breaking the trajectory of the AIDS epidemic with bold actions and smart choices," said Michel Sidibe, executive director of UNAIDS. "Investments in the AIDS response are paying off, but gains are fragile -- the challenge now is how we can all work to accelerate progress."
But not all the news from the UNAIDS report, which covered 182 countries, was good.
"Even though the number of new HIV infections is decreasing, there are two new HIV infections for every one person starting HIV treatment," UNAIDS said.
Sub-Saharan Africa continues to be the region most affected by the epidemic, with 69 percent of all new HIV infections, according to UNAIDS.
In seven countries, mostly in eastern Europe and central Asia, new HIV infection rates have increased by 25 percent.
UNAIDS said in the Asia-Pacific region, 90 percent of countries have laws that obstruct the rights of people living with HIV.
Despite the lower numbers of new HIV infections and AIDS-related deaths, UNAIDS said the demand for resources is surpassing the supply.
"Donor governments' disbursements for the AIDS response in 2009 stood at $7.6 billion, lower than the $7.7 billion available in 2008," UNAIDS said. "Declines in international investments will affect low-income countries the most -- nearly 90 percent rely on international funding for their AIDS programs."World AIDS Day comes amid progress, concern
By the CNN WIre Staff
December 1, 2010... more
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Don't worry, THEY ARE NOT REALLY DEAD, ONLY DIGITALLY DEAD!!
Usher, Katie Holmes, Ryan Seacrest, Kim Kardashian, Alicia- Keys, and more have sacrificed thier digital life to help Keep a Child Alive by saving millions of lives affected by HIV/AIDS in Africa and India. They will not be posting on their usual networking/social sites until they raise $1,000,000 to help support this cause.
Visit http://buylife.org/ to buy their life back now and help support this incredibly important cause!
or
Text one of the celebrity involved first name to 90999 to donate $10Don't worry, THEY ARE NOT REALLY DEAD, ONLY DIGITALLY DEAD!!
Usher, Katie... more
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The 46664 campaign focuses on global social issues such as poverty, hunger, unemployment, education, gender inequality, discrimination, and HIV AIDS prevention. The 46664 Bangle initiative aims to create jobs for the less fortunate and also spreads awareness of the 46664 campaign.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UdfeVgIOcwoThe 46664 campaign focuses on global social issues such as poverty, hunger,... more
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Heckling From AIDS Activists Irritates Obama During Boston Rally
Theblaze.com
October 16, 2010
by Scott Baker
BOSTON (AP) — With the congressional elections fast approaching, President Barack Obama acknowledged Saturday that the hope and energy he stirred during his presidential campaign may have faded in the face of a grinding economic crisis.
Click too watch...(VIDEO) President Obama Gets Pissed Off At Aids Activist Hecklers, They Dare Question Obama…http://ctpatriot1970.wordpress.com/2010/10/16/video-president-obama-gets-pissed-off-at-aids-activist-hecklers-they-dare-question-obama/
“We’re doing the grinding, sometimes frustrating work of actually delivering change. I know it can be discouraging,” Obama told a crowd of 10,000 at an energetic rally at Boston’s Hynes Convention Center.Heckling From AIDS Activists Irritates Obama During Boston Rally
Theblaze.com... more
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(CBS) 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 for sure.
The new research does help explain why monkeys who have S.I.V. do not get sick from it - they have had tens of thousands of years to adapt.
In order to track S.I.V. back in time, researchers led by the University of Arizona and the Tucson and Tulane National Primate Research Center looked at the DNA of 79 monkeys from Bioko, a volcanic island off the coast of West Africa.
According to the New York Times, the island was cut off from the mainland 10,000 years ago and six species of monkeys have developed exclusively there. Four of them had S.I.V. That meant the virus was at least 10,000 years old. Scientists then measured how fast the virus mutates and calculated its age at between 32,000 and 78,000 years, the Times reports.(CBS) The precursor to H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS, may be older than you... more
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30 years with HIV: 3 men reflect
By Saundra Young, CNN
July 23, 2010 4:23 a.m. EDT
(CNN) -- June 5, 1981. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued its first warning about a rare pneumonia called pneumocystis circulating among a small group of young gay men.
Unrealized at the time, it was the official beginning of the HIV/AIDS epidemic.
Dr. Michael Gottlieb, then a 33-year-old immunologist at the University of California Los Angeles, treated one of the first patients, a 31-year-old gay male with pneumocystis.
"In those days patients were essentially given a terminal diagnosis," Gottlieb says. "We had no medication whatsoever. At the very beginning we did not even know it was viral infection."
In 1982, the CDC coined the term AIDS, for Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome, but the cause was still unknown. In 1983, the virus was finally isolated and given a name: Human Immunodeficiency Virus or HIV.
At that time there were no treatments. Patients died quickly. Today, with the development of antiretroviral drugs and a much greater understanding of the disease, people who contract HIV in the United States are living decades.
The drugs carry side effects, some extremely debilitating, but because of those drugs, a small number of long-term survivors are experiencing what they couldn't have imagined when they got their diagnosis in the epidemic's early days -- middle age.
"The first antiretrovirals were introduced in 1987; that gave us a glimmer of hope," Gottlieb says, describing drugs that disrupted the virus' ability to multiply in the body.
Dr. Michael Gottlieb, then a 33-year old immunologist at the University of California Los Angeles, treated one of the first patients.
Dr. Michael Gottlieb, then a 33-year old immunologist at the University of California Los Angeles, treated one of the first patients.
"In 1996, the advent of the protease inhibitor and the so-called cocktail changed the prognosis for HIV, and that therapy has required considerable refinement, because even that therapy had complications from the drugs themselves that caused a lot of damage -- lasting damage -- and many of those long-term survivors suffered and continue to suffer the complications of the earlier medication."
Jim Chud is one of those long-term survivors. The 53-year-old AIDS activist says he was a 20-year old bisexual athlete at Yale University when he contracted the virus. Chud thinks it was 1977 when he got sick. He was leading a double life: He had a steady girlfriend, but took weekend visits to the bathhouses in New York.
By 1985, Chud was living in Washington. Having watched many of his friends get sick and die, Chud was at the head of the line when the new HIV test arrived. By 1989 he had full-blown AIDS -- the most advanced stages of HIV. "I thought I was going to die," he says. "I didn't think I would see 30."
He started volunteering for drug trials. One, a National Institutes of Health study looking at the combination of drugs AZT and DDC, left him paralyzed for four months. He has had more than 30 surgeries on his spine and neck.
In 1999, Chud contracted a fungal infection in his sinuses that spread to his brain. There were more toxic drugs and six more surgeries. Over the years he's been on 12 different HIV drugs. Today he's disabled and along with HIV medications takes prescriptions to battle pain, infections and depression.
His concern? That HIV has vanished from the spotlight. "People are still dying, and to think that doesn't happen anymore and isn't newsworthy is a problem. Kids aren't getting the message today that we got many years ago that this is a fatal disease and it's not to be taken lightly."
Cleve Jones has never taken the disease lightly. The 55-year-old human rights activist and founder of the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt thinks he contracted the virus in the winter of 1978-79. Jones was living in San Francisco, California, and was working for pioneer gay rights leader and San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk. AIDS was already exacting a heavy toll on the community. After the HIV test became available in spring 1985, Jones received his official diagnosis.
"I was living with the virus in my body for a full 10 years before treatment became available," he says.
He participated in the first clinical trial looking at multiple drugs, now called combination therapy. But back then the drugs didn't work for very long. "The science was pretty primitive then," he says. "I was always looking a year ahead, two to three years ahead into the research pipeline, knowing that whatever combination was working for me at any particular moment -- the odds were good it wouldn't be working a few months later."
Today, the prognosis is much better. While other countries continue to struggle to manage the disease, in the United States a diagnosis is no longer an automatic death sentence. But Jones says there aren't many long-term survivors left. "It's bittersweet for us. There is nobody left in my life today that knew me when I was young."
When he looks back over the last 30-plus years, Jones can acknowledge how far the fight has come. "I still hope for an outright cure. I still hope for a vaccine. But it took a very long time and there were many dark periods where I felt the world had waited too long to respond."
Phill Wilson has devoted his life to stopping the AIDS pandemic in the black community. His diagnosis in 1985 spurred him to help found a number of AIDS service organizations. The 53-year-old was living in Los Angeles, California, with his partner and believes he was infected in 1980 at age 24. Like Chud and Jones, Wilson says he was also one of the first tested and diagnosed and among the first in Los Angeles put on AZT, the first antiviral drug approved for treating HIV.
"It was not a question of if you were going to die, it was a question of when you were going to die," he says. "We knew that AZT was not good enough and so the goal was to stay alive until there was another option."
Wilson says he no longer remembers what it's like not to live with HIV.
"When I was diagnosed, a long-term survivor was someone who lived 12 months, and most people were dead in six months. And so there was no expectation that someone would live as long as I have lived."
The disease and the drugs took a heavy toll on Wilson. There were three near-death experiences. Once, doctors gave him less than 48 hours to live. "It's hard to describe what it was like living in the middle of the storm during the worst of the plague years. But one of the things that I think happens is when you witness firsthand that kind of death and devastation, I don't think that you are so afraid."
In 1999, Wilson founded the Black AIDS Institute, the only national HIV/AIDS think tank that focuses solely on black people. In February, he was appointed to the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS. He is driven and has no plans to slow down.
This week Wilson has been in Vienna, Austria, at the 18th International AIDS Conference, keeping his finger on the pulse of the disease. But in the shadow of these new advances, he can't help looking to the past.
"It's bittersweet, because while it is incredibly inspiring to know that there are going to be people who won't get infected and there are going to be people who get infected and won't get sick and there are people who'll get sick and won't die and that is inspirational, and I can celebrate the life I have to live, but I can never forget all the advances in the world came too late for my first partner and the literally hundreds of people that I know who have died from this disease."
http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2010/HEALTH/07/23/30.years.hiv/c1main.wilson.chud.jones.gi.jpg30 years with HIV: 3 men reflect
By Saundra Young, CNN
July 23, 2010 4:23 a.m. EDT... more
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The Comment is by Dr Steffanie Strathdee, University of California San Diego, CA, USA, and Professor Chris Beyrer, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, MD, USA (both paper authors in the Series) and colleagues.
1. Drug users are non-compliant
2. Drug users do not respond as well to antiretrovirals as do non-drug-using patients
3. Drug users are difficult to study and have poor retention rates in cohorts, making prospective research studies with drug users difficult or impossible
4. Drug users are more concerned about getting high than using injecting equipment safely
5. Drug users don't have much sex; their HIV risks are largely or entirely from needle sharing
6. If drug users keep using, it is almost inevitable that they will acquire HIV infection
7. Unlike gay men or sex workers, drug users don't have strong communities, so community interventions are unlikely to work
8. Rates of drug use are higher among minorities in the USA and other industrialised countries
9. Needle exchanges encourage drug use
10. Methadone (or buprenorphine) treatment just exchanges one drug for another
11. People who use stimulants are all heavy, out-of-control users who won't change their risky behaviours
12. Fear is an effective deterrent for drug use
Each of these myths is rebutted in the Comment. For example, there are studies showing that all-cause mortality in HIV patients who had started antiretroviral drugs six years or more ago was similar in both injecting drug users and non-drug users (myth 2). There is also no evidence to show needle exchanges encourage drug use (myth 9), with an Alaskan study showing no difference in drug use between people using a needle exchange and those buying needles from pharmacies. Stimulant users are not all out of control users incapable of reducing risky behaviours (myth 11), with Muasback and colleagues showing risk reduction is possible in HIV-negative heterosexuals and HIV-positive men who have sex with men, despite both groups using crystal meth.
The authors conclude: "The myths about HIV acquisition and people who use drugs are straightforwardly countered by scientific evidence, but like so many forms of prejudice, they persist despite the evidence. It is past time for these prejudices to change. Providers, decision makers, and all engaged in the global fight against HIV infection
have an obligation to examine biases against people who use drugs, learn the facts beyond the myths, and let evidence drive responses."The Comment is by Dr Steffanie Strathdee, University of California San Diego, CA, USA,... more
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American scientists are touting a major stride toward a vaccine that can ward off HIV, after finding two key proteins that neutralize 91 percent of the virus' 190 strains.
The team of researchers with the National Institutes of Health's Vaccine Research Center hopes the antibody discovery can spur successful work toward a method of preventing HIV, which already afflicts an estimated 33 million people worldwide.
http://www.aolnews.com/health/article/discovery-helps-us-researchers-close-in-on-hiv-vaccine/19547029American scientists are touting a major stride toward a vaccine that can ward off HIV,... more
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By MARK SCHOOFS
U.S. government scientists have discovered three powerful antibodies, the strongest of which neutralizes 91% of HIV strains, more than any AIDS antibody yet discovered.
Looking closely at the strongest antibody, they have detailed exactly what part of the virus it targets and how it attacks that site. Together with recent research into how to make animals produce antibodies, the new findings constitute a significant step toward an AIDS vaccine.
The antibodies were discovered in the cells of a 60-year-old African-American gay man, known in the scientific literature as Donor 45, whose body made the antibodies naturally. Researchers screened 25 million of his cells to find 12 that produced the antibodies.
Now the trick will be for scientists to develop a vaccine or other methods to make anyone's body produce them.
That effort "will require work," said Gary Nabel, director of the Vaccine Research Center at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, who was a leader of the research. "We're going to be at this for a while" before any benefit is seen in the clinic, he said.
The research was published Thursday in two papers in the online edition of the journal Science, 10 days before the opening of the large International AIDS Conference in Vienna, where prevention science is expected to take center stage.
More than 33 million people were living with HIV at the end of 2008, and about 2.7 million contracted the virus that year, according to United Nations estimates. Vaccines, which are believed to work by activating the body's ability to produce antibodies, eliminated or curtailed smallpox, polio and other once-feared viral diseases, so they have been the holy grail of AIDS research.
The Quest for a Vaccine
See major developments in AIDS research.
Last year, following a trial in Thailand, results of the first HIV vaccine to show any efficacy were announced. But that vaccine reduced the chances of infection by only about 30%, and controversy erupted because in one common analysis the results were not statistically significant. The vaccine was not designed to elicit the new antibodies.
The new discovery is part of what Wayne Koff, head of research and development at the nonprofit International AIDS Vaccine Initiative, calls a "renaissance" in HIV vaccine research.
Antibodies that are utterly ineffective, or that disable just one or two strains, are common. Until last year, only a handful of "broadly neutralizing antibodies," those that efficiently disable a large swath of HIV strains, had been discovered, and none of them neutralized more than about 40% of known HIV variants.
In the last year, thanks to efficient new detection methods, at least a half dozen broadly neutralizing antibodies, including the three latest ones, have been identified in peer-reviewed journals. Most of the new antibodies are also more potent, able to knock out HIV at far lower concentrations than their previously known counterparts.
Dennis Burton of the Scripps Institute in La Jolla, Calif., led a team that discovered two broadly neutralizing antibodies last year; he says his team has identified additional, unpublished ones.
Some of the new antibodies attack different points on the virus, raising hopes that they could work synergistically. In unpublished research, John Mascola, deputy director of the Vaccine Research Center, has shown that one of Dr. Burton's antibodies neutralizes virtually all the strains that are resistant to the strongest new antibody, called VRC01, and vice versa. Only one strain out of 95 tested was resistant to both antibodies, he said. Dr. Mascola is one of the authors of Thursday's papers.
In the latest research, the antibodies were found to attack a key site on a spike on the virus that attaches to cells the virus infects. Because this site has to attach to a specific molecule on the cell surface, it is one of the few parts of HIV that don't mutate much.
Scientists tested 32 patients to see which ones had sera—clear fluid in the blood—that neutralized HIV. The sera contained unknown antibodies. Donor 45 had promising sera, so they focused on him.
Researchers say they plan to test the new antibodies, likely blended together in a cocktail, in three broad ways.
First, they could be given to people in their raw form, somewhat like a drug, to prevent transmission of the virus. However, they would likely be expensive and persist in the body only for a limited time, perhaps weeks, making that method impractical for all but specialized cases, such as to prevent mother-to-child transmission during childbirth.
The antibody could also be tested in a "microbicide," a gel that women and receptive partners in gay male pairings could apply before sex to prevent infection.
The antibodies might even be tried as a treatment for people who are already infected. While the antibodies are unlikely to completely suppress HIV on their own, say scientists, they might boost the efficacy of current antiretroviral drugs.
Dr. Nabel said that the Vaccine Research Center has contracted with a company to produce an antibody suitable for use in humans so that testing in people could begin.
The second way to use the new research is to deploy classical vaccine approaches. Traditional vaccines work by using a weakened or dead virus, or a viral fragment, to train the immune system to recognize the invader and produce antibodies. Because the new HIV antibodies are extremely specific, attaching tightly to particular parts of the virus, scientists have to show the immune system an exact replica of the parts of the virus that the antibodies attack.
That's a tall order—for example, it can be hard for such a replica to hold the correct shape—but different teams are trying different ways to achieve this goal.
In a little-noticed study published earlier this year in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, scientists at Merck & Co. provided what Dr. Koff calls a "proof of principle" that other researchers can build on. Starting with an old antibody—one that is much weaker than the newly found ones—the Merck researchers created replicas of its target site. It was a painstaking, iterative process, requiring the researchers to add chemical bonds to stabilize the replica so that it wouldn't collapse.
Eventually, Merck was able to produce experimental vaccine candidates capable of stimulating guinea pigs and rabbits to produce the antibody. John Shiver, head of Merck's vaccine research, said he believes similar vaccine candidates could be "engineered using one of these new antibodies."
There are other potential pitfalls. There is evidence that Donor 45's cells took months or possibly even years to create the powerful antibodies. That means scientists might have to give repeated booster shots or devise other ways to speed up this process.
Finally, there are experimental methods that employ tactics such as gene therapy. Nobel laureate David Baltimore, with funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, is working on one such approach.
His team at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Calif., has stitched genes that code for antibodies into a harmless virus, which they then inject into mice. The virus infects mouse cells, turning them into factories that produce the antibodies.
Using one of the old antibodies, Dr. Baltimore said his team was able to protect mice from getting infected when injected with live HIV. Those experiments are not published. Recently, his lab has begun working with Dr. Burton's antibodies and the strongest antibody from Donor 45. Even if it proves successful, this strategy is years away from the clinic, Dr. Baltimore cautioned.
Write to Mark Schoofs at mark.schoofs@wsj.com
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703609004575355072271264394.html?mod=e2fbBy MARK SCHOOFS
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