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Tag: "hiv" at biology news

Topical treatment shown to inhibit HIV and herpes simplex virus infection

Mount Sinai School of Medicine researchers demonstrated that a gel applied in the vagina provides protection from both the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and the herpes simplex Virus. The study, presented at the 12th Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections, is the first to show that a gel can retain anti-viral activity within the human vagina. .. . "There is an urgent need for...

Elusive HIV shape change revealed; Key clue to how virus infects cells

Structural biologists at Children's Hospital Boston and Harvard Medical School have shown how a key part of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) changes shape, triggering other changes that allow the AIDS virus to enter and infect cells. Their findings, published in the Feb. 24 issue of the journal Nature, offer clues that will help guide vaccine and treatment approaches. . Researchers led by H...

Research advances quest for HIV-1 vaccine

Scientists have uncovered new information that may help guide design of vaccines for HIV-1, the virus that causes AIDS. A new detailed structural analysis of the complex formed by an anti-HIV antibody called 4E10 and its specific target provides insight into why this particular antibody is so broadly effective, a rare characteristic for HIV discovered thus far. The research is published in the Fe...

Male circumcision reduces risk of HIV transmission from women to men

The first study to examine the probability of.HIV infection per act of heterosexual sex among a population with.multiple sexual partners has found that uncircumcised men have more.than twice the risk of acquiring HIV than do circumcised men..In the study, published in the Feb. 15 issue of The Journal of.Infectious Diseases, now available online, Jared Baeten and colleagues.from the United States...

A much-needed shot in the arm for HIV vaccine development

International efforts towards developing a.vaccine against HIV infection have been given a much-needed boost by.the publication today of the Global HIV/AIDS Vaccine Enterprise's.scientific strategic plan, published online in the freely available,.open-access global health journal PLoS Medicine..The Global HIV/AIDS Vaccine Enterprise is an international alliance of.independent agencies and organiz...

HIV Patients May Be at Risk of Heart Problems When Taking Protease Inhibitor Drugs

A widely-used class of drugs that keep the HIV-virus infection from progressing to AIDS may cause serious and potentially lethal heart rhythm disturbances in some patients. The finding of a Mayo Clinic-led investigation appears in the current edition of The Lancet. .. In collaboration with colleagues from the HIV Program of Hennepin County Medical Center, Minneapolis; the University of Minnesota...

Novel Enzyme Shows Potential As An Anti-HIV Target

At just 9.8 kilobases, the HIV genome pales in comparison to the 3.2 gigabases of its human and nonhuman primate targets. The compact retrovirus encodes just 14 proteins, which play different roles in promoting viral infection and virulence. As a retrovirus, HIV uses the host’s cellular machinery—including RNA polymerases, which carry out transcription—to copy its RNA genome into DNA and infiltra...

Jefferson Virologists Coax HIV Out of Hiding

When researchers came up with the powerful.cocktail of anti-HIV drugs known as highly active antiretroviral.therapy (HAART), they hoped they had found a way to finally rid the.body of the virus. But they were wrong. The virus instead goes into.hiding, dormant and practically undetectable in the body ?and.impervious to attack. While HAART manages to keep the virus at bay,.it’s still quite capable...

Study identifies predictors of HIV drug resistance in patients beginning triple therapy

A scientist at the Marine Biological.Laboratory (MBL) has published the results of an EPA-funded clam embryo.study that supports her hypothesis that, when combined, the pollutants.bromoform, chloroform, and tetrachloroethylene--a chemical cocktail.known as BCE--can act synergistically to alter a key regulator in nerve.cell development. While scientists have previously studied the effects.of these...

An HIV Protein Plays a Surprising Role in Gene Activation

Retroviruses are expert manipulators when it comes to co-opting their host's cellular resources. A great deal of human complexity stems from the vast repertoire of proteins and mechanisms dedicated to the business of regulating gene expression, and retroviruses like HIV have evolved myriad ways of redirecting that machinery to their own benefit. .. Humans and other eukaryotes have three types of...

A comprehensive response to HIV could prevent 10 million AIDS deaths in Africa by 2020

Based on successful animal studies, a novel.vaccine that uses immune cells as factories to produce Her2/neu protein.may offer a way to treat some human breast cancers, say researchers at.The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center. [Ed : ].Their study, published in the online journal, Breast Cancer Research,.on Nov. 29, 2004, showed that the vaccine protected 86 percent of.experimental...

Potential Cure for Lymphoma in HIV patients

Stem cell transplants have become the.standard of care for patients with relapsed lymphoma, but not for.patients who suffer from both this disease and HIV. A new study showing.that this treatment is a viable option for select patients with.HIV-associated lymphoma will be published in the January 15, 2005,.issue of Blood, the official journal of the American Society of.Hematology..Because of the i...

HIV Infection Still On The Rise

Preventive measures are failing to stem the rising rate of HIV infection, warn two senior doctors in an editorial in this week's BMJ. .. .. . For instance, the search for a vaccine against HIV has so far produced only negative results, while microbicides have proved disappointing. Al...

NYC's First Rapid HIV Drug-resistant AIDS Case Prompts Call to Step Up HIV Prevention

New York City's Public Health Department today issued a public health advisory after reporting the first documented case of an alarming, new, rapidly-progressing and highly drug resistant strain of HIV in a New York man who progressed from his initial HIV infection, thought to have occurred in mid-October 2004, to a largely untreatable strain of AIDS in just three months. . According to City heal...

New therapy for HIV/AIDS eliminates needles and excessive toxicity

A team led by Johns Hopkins scientists has.found the first clear evidence that the process behind the human immune.system's remarkable ability to recognize and respond to a million.different proteins might have originated from a family of genes whose.only apparent function is to jump around in genetic material.. .essentially cut themselves out of the genetic material, and scientists.have suspecte...

UCLA scientists transform HIV into cancer-seeking missile

Camouflaging an impotent AIDS virus in new clothes enables it to hunt down metastasized melanoma cells in living mice, reports a UCLA AIDS Institute study in the Feb. 13 online edition of Nature Medicine. The scientists added the protein that makes fireflies glow to the virus in order to track its journey from the bloodstream to new tumors in the animals' lungs. .. "For the past 20 years, gene th...

Discovery Could Lead To Novel Approaches In HIV Treatment

,.the Canadian Network for Vaccines and Immunotherapeutics, has announced.the development of a new method to assess how well the thymus (an organ.located at the base of the neck) works and the discovery of a.functional abnormality of this organ in HIV-infected individuals. The.team of investigators led by Dr. Rafick-Pierre Sékaly, professor at.Université de Montréal, scientist at the CHUM Resear...

Boosting HIV screening can increase survival and is cost effective

Expanded HIV screening can increase patient life span, prevent the spread of the disease, and is cost effective, researchers at Yale, Harvard and the Massachusetts General Hospital report in the February 10 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM). .. . "The publication of these papers repre...

New Insights Into HIV Immunity Suggest Alternative Approach to Vaccines

New insights by Duke University Medical Center researchers as to how HIV evades the human immune system may offer a new approach for developing HIV vaccines. The findings suggest some HIV vaccines may have failed because they induce a class of antibodies that a patient's own immune system is programmed to destroy. .. The Duke team discovered that certain broadly protective antibodies, which recog...

Antibiotic might fight HIV-induced neurological problems

By studying animals, Johns Hopkins researchers have discovered that the antibiotic minocycline might help alleviate HIV's negative effects on the brain and central nervous system, problems that can develop even though antiretroviral therapy controls the virus elsewhere in the body. .. Five monkeys infected with simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV), a very close relative of HIV, and treated with mi...

UCLA launches $20 million stem cell institute to investigate HIV, cancer and neurological disorders

Experts in bioengineering, imaging, molecular genetics, immunology, ethics, hematology/oncology and cellular biology to collaborate on Proposition 71 research .. . "As one of the world's leading research universities, UCLA has long been engaged in adult and embryonic stem ce...

HIV vaccine trial breaks ground for future research

The results of the world's first phase 3 HIV vaccine efficacy trial are reported in the March 1 issue of The Journal of Infectious Diseases, now available online. Although the vaccine was ineffective in preventing HIV infection, the trial represents a landmark in the fight against HIV and offers the scientific community a foundation on which to build future trials. .. The multi-centered trial, co...

Antiretroviral therapy may prevent excess risk of some cancers in people with HIV

In people infected with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) may prevent most excess cases of Kaposi sarcoma and non-Hodgkin lymphoma, according to a new study in the March 16 issue of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. . Studies of people with acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) have reported increased risks of several cancers, includi...

HIV-1 spread through six transmission lines in the UK

Contrary to the prevailing belief that the HIV epidemic in the UK can be traced back to one source, a new study suggests that HIV spread via at least six independent virus introductions and subsequent transmission chains. The findings, published in the latest issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, also suggest that antiviral therapy has not had a significant impact on the g...

Youth With HIV Take More Risks After New Meds Introduced

Teens with HIV are having more risky sex with more partners than their counterparts did in the years before powerful new medications for HIV were introduced in 1996, according to a new report in the American Journal of Health Behavior. .. . Highly active antiretroviral therapies, or...

Biologists discover why 10% of Europeans are safe from HIV

Biologists at the University of Liverpool have discovered how the plagues of the Middle Ages have made around 10% of Europeans resistant to HIV. Scientists have known for some time that these individuals carry a genetic mutation (known as CCR5-delta32) that prevents the virus from entering the cells of the immune system but have been unable to account for the high levels of the gene in Scandinavi...

Shutting down the HIV assembly line

After infecting a susceptible cell, the human immunodeficiency virus hijacks that cell's normal machinery to produce carbon copies of itself. New HIV particles roll off the cellular assembly lines, burst like bubbles out of the cell, and float off to invade other cellular factories. Vanderbilt University Medical Center investigators have now identified an early step in HIV particle assembly. The...

Friendly bacteria in humans may protect against HIV

Scientists have identified good bacteria already living in some humans that target and trap HIV and may protect against infection. They report their findings today at the 2005 American Society for Microbiology Beneficial Microbes Conference. . "I believe every life form has its natural enemy, and HIV should not be the exception," says Dr. Lin Tao, Associate Professor of the Department of Oral Bio...

Defensins Ward Off HIV In Two Ways

The body attempts to protect itself from HIV infection via the innate immune system. Defensins are proteins found in cells, which have been shown to have anti-HIV activity. However, the mechanism by which the defensins control HIV infection has not been known. Appearing online on February 17 in advance of publication in the March 1 print edition of the Journal of Clinical Investigation, Theresa C...

Gladstone investigators discover how resting T cells avoid HIV infection

Scientists have discovered the mechanism that enables some CD4 T cells -- the main target of HIV -- to thwart the virus. The discovery, reported on April 13 in the online version of Nature, could open the door to an entirely new strategy for preventing the spread of HIV infection in the body's cells, according to the senior author of the study, Gladstone Institute of Virology and Immunology Direc...

Two chemicals boost immune cells' ability to fight HIV without gene therapy

A UCLA AIDS Institute study has discovered that two chemical compounds may help the immune systems of HIV-infected persons fight the disease without invasive gene therapy. Presented March 5 at the 2005 Palm Springs Symposium on HIV/AIDS, the new research demonstrates that the new chemicals activate telomerase -- a protein that boosts immune cells' ability to divide, enabling them to continue dest...

AIDS Public Awareness Campaign Expands Following Report Of Rapidly Progressive HIV

State Health Commissioner Antonia C. Novello, M.D., M.P.H., Dr.P.H., today announced the expansion of New York State's HIV/AIDS Public Awareness and Education campaign to help combat the potential spread of HIV and further protect New Yorkers from the virus that causes AIDS. .. Dr. Novello said, "In light of recent reports of a drug-resistant, rapidly progressive strain of HIV in New York City, w...

TrueBlue Archive Will Store Raw Life Sciences Data for Proteomics and Drug Testing

A new book, Biological Weapons Defense: Infectious Disease and Counterbioterrorism, deals with the intentional causality of disease. Published by Humana Press, this text is also available in e-Book. Many of the contributors come from the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID), the nation's premier biodefense laboratory. . In this 624-page, hardcover text edited by...

Ancient immune defense mechanism is no match for HIV-1

Researchers have discovered that mammalian cells infected with HIV-1 engage a primitive defense mechanism that was previously observed only in plants and invertebrates. The research also reveals exactly how HIV-1 successfully thwarts this rare form of immunity in vertebrate cells. However, elucidation of the mechanism HIV-1 uses to protect itself provides some critical insight into a potential vu...

'EuroVacc 02' HIV Vaccine Trial Begins

.. Lausanne, Switzerland and London, United Kingdom, February 16, 2005 -- The European Vaccine Effort against HIV/AIDS today announced that a phase I clinical trial of novel investigational vaccines comprising DNA-HIV-C and NYVAC-HIV-C for the prevention of HIV infection has started in Lausanne and London in February 2005. These vaccines are based on HIV subtype C, which is prevalent in China, I...

Virologists make major step towards understanding the process of HIV infection

A working group of virologists headed by Professor Hans-Georg Kräusslich at Heidelberg University Hospitals, jointly with Professor Hanswalter Zentgraf, Division of Applied Tumor Virology of the Deutsches Krebsforschungszentrum (German Cancer Research Center, DKFZ), have been the first to label Human Immunodeficiency Viruses (HIV) for visual investigations without inhibiting the functional charac...

Asymptomatic HIV babies could use earlier treatment

Identifying and treating HIV-infected newborns is a race against the clock, according to a study from the Stanford University School of Medicine and Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital. Researchers found that HIV-infected infants treated with one or two antiretroviral drugs within two months of birth were less likely to develop AIDS by their third birthday than were infants who were 3 or 4 months...

New HIV drug candidate developed in Sweden

Which is more likely to happen - you being in a car wreck or being bitten by a shark? .. . .. McEachran goes on to note that far mor...

Antiretroviral Therapy May Prevent HIV Transmission From Breastfeeding Mothers To Infants

Two new studies support the hypothesis that combination antiretroviral drug therapy may reduce the risk of mother-to-child HIV transmission through breastfeeding, findings that could have significant implications in the developing world. . Researchers in the first study found mothers pass antiretroviral medications on to their breastfeeding infants in concentrations high enough to prevent infecti...

Random gene expression may drive HIV into hiding

Random fluctuations in gene expression can influence the fates of cells infected with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) far more than previously thought, according to new research from Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) researchers at the University of California, Berkeley. By combining experimental and computational studies of HIV's replication cycle, the researchers found evidence that the...