http://medicalxpress.com/hiv-aids-news/ en-us PhysOrg Team Medical Xpress provides the latest news on HIV, Aids, HIV research, Aids Research, Aids Studies and HIV medicine. The hunt for an HIV vaccine has gobbled up $8 billion in the past decade, and the failure of the most recent efficacy trial has delivered yet another setback to 26 years of efforts. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-05-gap-hiv-vaccine-efforts-latest.html HIV & AIDS 2013-05-19T09:20:01-07:00 Big names in medicine are set to give an upbeat assessment of the war on AIDS on Tuesday, 30 years after French researchers identified the virus that causes the disease. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-05-aids-science-lexicon.html HIV & AIDS 2013-05-18T02:50:01-07:00 Researchers at the University of Cincinnati (UC) have found that incorporating a peer-referral program for HIV testing into emergency departments can reach new groups of high-risk patients and brings more patients into the hospital for testing. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-05-peer-referral-hiv-testing-emergency-departments.html HIV & AIDS 2013-05-17T12:41:10-07:00 (HealthDay)—Liver transplants to treat a common type of liver cancer are a viable option for people infected with HIV, according to new research. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-05-hiv-barrier-liver-transplant.html HIV & AIDS 2013-05-17T12:40:01-07:00 A new Yale study looks at the scope and consequences of a burgeoning health problem in the cities of the U.S. Northeast: concurrent infection with both HIV and Hepatitis C (HCV). The study appears online in the May 14 issue of the Public Library of Science (PLoS One). http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-05-twin-epidemics-hiv-hepatitis-urban.html HIV & AIDS 2013-05-17T08:40:03-07:00 There is no government strategy to fight the spread of AIDS in Russia, where the number of deaths caused by the disease continues to grow, a senior healthcare official said on Thursday. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-05-russia-anti-aids-strategy.html HIV & AIDS 2013-05-16T15:03:36-07:00 One in ten South Africans is HIV positive but AIDS-related deaths are falling as ramped-up treatment begins to have an impact, the country's official statistics agency said Tuesday. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-05-south-africans-hiv-positive.html HIV & AIDS 2013-05-14T12:58:22-07:00 Cambodia is on track to become one of the few countries in the world to successfully reverse its HIV epidemic and may eliminate new infections by 2020, the World Health Organization said Friday. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-05-cambodia-hiv-infections.html HIV & AIDS 2013-05-10T07:34:46-07:00 A team of NIH scientists has developed a new tool to identify broadly neutralizing antibodies (bNAbs) capable of preventing infection by the majority of HIV strains found around the globe, an advance that could help speed HIV vaccine research. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-05-scientists-tool-powerful-hiv-antibodies.html HIV & AIDS 2013-05-09T14:00:15-07:00 (Medical Xpress)—Scientists have long believed that measuring the amount of HIV in a person's blood is an indicator of whether the virus is actively reproducing. A University of Delaware-led research team reports new evidence that hidden virus replication may be occurring within the body's tissue, despite undetectable virus levels in the blood. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-05-team-mathematical-hidden-hiv.html HIV & AIDS 2013-05-08T09:00:03-07:00 Continuing analysis of an HIV vaccine trial undertaken in Thailand is yielding additional information about how immune responses were triggered and why the vaccine did not protect more people. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-05-antibodies-limited-hiv-vaccine-trial.html HIV & AIDS 2013-05-06T15:00:32-07:00 (Medical Xpress)—Beth Meyerson, health policy expert at the Indiana University School of Public Health-Bloomington, said the new screening guidelines by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force represent an important shift in HIV testing and will result in more HIV screenings because they will now be reimbursable. But the availability of the tests remains a big unknown. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-05-hiv-guidelines-access-screenings-issue.html HIV & AIDS 2013-05-02T06:58:12-07:00 HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, is notorious for hiding within certain types of cells, where it reproduces at a slowed rate and eventually gives rise to chronic inflammation, despite drug therapy. But researchers at Temple University School of Medicine's Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine and Center for Substance Abuse Research (CSAR) recently discovered that synthetic anti-inflammatory substances distantly related to the active ingredient of marijuana may be able to take the punch out of HIV while inside one of its major hideouts – immune cells known as macrophages. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-05-scientists-weaken-hiv-infection-immune.html HIV & AIDS 2013-05-01T15:25:25-07:00 A new use for compounds related in composition to the active ingredient in marijuana may be on the horizon: a new research report published in the Journal of Leukocyte Biology shows that compounds that stimulate the cannabinoid type 2 (CB2) receptor in white blood cells, specifically macrophages, appear to weaken HIV-1 infection. The CB2 receptor is the molecular link through which the pharmaceutical properties of cannabis are manifested. Diminishing HIV-1 infection in this manner might make current anti-viral therapies more effective and provide some protection against certain HIV-1 complications. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-04-synthetic-derivatives-thc-weaken-hiv-.html HIV & AIDS 2013-04-30T12:08:45-07:00 Elizabeth D. Lowenthal, M.D., M.S.C.E., of the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine and Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, and colleagues conducted a study to determine whether there was a difference in time to virological failure between HIV-infected children initiating nevirapine vs. efavirenz-based antiretroviral treatment in Botswana. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-04-antiretroviral-regimen-virological-failure-hiv-infected.html HIV & AIDS 2013-04-30T10:00:01-07:00 (HealthDay)—New guidelines from the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force call for virtually every adult to be routinely screened for HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-04-guidelines-hiv-screening-adults.html HIV & AIDS 2013-04-29T19:50:01-07:00 (HealthDay)—Danish scientists testing a novel HIV treatment in human trials contend that they're confident their strategy will result in a cure for the AIDS-causing virus, according to news reports. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-04-hiv-danish-scientists-contend.html HIV & AIDS 2013-04-29T14:10:01-07:00 The latest bad news in the hunt for an AIDS vaccine: The government halted a large U.S. study on Thursday, saying the experimental shots are not preventing HIV infection. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-04-hiv-vaccine-govt-halts.html HIV & AIDS 2013-04-25T14:00:28-07:00 (Medical Xpress)—Earlier this year, doctors at an infectious disease conference announced that a baby in rural Mississippi born with HIV had been "functionally cured" of the infection after receiving aggressive treatment immediately after birth. With such a result deemed to be virtually impossible only a few years ago, it's a development Tulane infectious disease expert Dr. Russell Van Dyke calls "extremely gratifying." http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-04-mississippi-child-hiv.html HIV & AIDS 2013-04-25T09:00:02-07:00 Ghana is recalling a shipment of 120 million Chinese-made condoms distributed to charities in the country after testing showed that they were riddled with holes and prone to breaking, an official said Tuesday. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-04-ghana-recalls-million-faulty-chinese.html HIV & AIDS 2013-04-23T12:51:02-07:00 (AP)—The U.S. Supreme Court wrestled Monday with the constitutional implications of a policy that forces private health organizations to denounce prostitution as a condition to get AIDS funding. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-04-high-court-dispute-aids-funding.html HIV & AIDS 2013-04-22T17:26:34-07:00 More than 1 in 270 people in the US are living with HIV and every 9.5 minutes someone is else is infected. The economic cost estimates associated with HIV/AIDS exceed 36 billion dollars a year. The development of effective drug treatments have allowed people with HIV to live longer with federal health officials now predicting that by 2015 one-half of the population with HIV in the US will be older than 50. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-04-recreational-hiv-antiretroviral-drug-linked.html HIV & AIDS 2013-04-21T18:44:40-07:00 Researchers at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University have discovered how the protein that blocks HIV-1 from multiplying in white blood cells is regulated. HIV-1 is the virus that causes AIDS, and the discovery could lead to novel approaches for addressing HIV-1 "in hiding" – namely eliminating reservoirs of HIV-1 that persist in patients undergoing antiretroviral therapy. The study was published today in the online edition of the journal Cell Host & Microbe. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-04-discovery-hiv-reservoirs.html HIV & AIDS 2013-04-17T14:30:56-07:00 HIV-infected women in sub-Saharan Africa who fed their babies exclusively with breast milk for more than the first four months of life had the lowest risk of transmitting the virus to their babies through breast milk, according to researchers at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health. Women who stopped breast feeding earlier than four months had the highest concentrations of HIV in their breast milk, and those who continued to breastfeed, but not exclusively, had concentration levels in-between the two practices. The findings are online in the journal Science Translational Medicine. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-04-hiv-infected-moms-breastfeed-exclusively-virus.html HIV & AIDS 2013-04-17T14:00:02-07:00 Circumcision drastically alters the microbiome of the penis, changes that could explain why circumcision offers protection against HIV and other viral infections. In a study to be published on April 16 in mBio, the online open-access journal of the American Society for Microbiology, researchers studied the effects of adult male circumcision on the types of bacteria that live under the foreskin before and after circumcision. By one year post-procedure, the total bacterial load in that area had dropped significantly and the prevalence of anaerobic bacteria, which thrive in locations with limited oxygen, declined while the numbers of some aerobic bacteria increased slightly. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-04-circumcision-penis-microbiome-hiv.html HIV & AIDS 2013-04-16T00:00:04-07:00 Studies have shown that about 10 percent of men infected with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) have an elevated resting energy expenditure (REE). Their bodies use more kilocalories for basic functions including circulation, body temperature, and breathing. Most studies have been conducted in men and those with solely women have had small sample sizes. A team of researchers has sought to rectify this with a matched, prospective, cross-sectional study. The results are featured in a new report published by the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-04-women-hiv-shown-elevated-resting.html HIV & AIDS 2013-04-16T00:00:03-07:00 Doctors in Russia accidentally infected a 16-month-old girl with HIV during a blood transfusion, investigators said Monday, opening a criminal probe into the case. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-04-russian-toddler-hiv-transfusion.html HIV & AIDS 2013-04-15T12:00:07-07:00 South Africa is home to the largest HIV epidemic in the world with a total of 5.6 million people living with HIV. Large-scale clinical trials evaluating combination methods of prevention and treatment are often prohibitively expensive and take years to complete. In the absence of such trials, mathematical models can help assess the effectiveness of different HIV intervention combinations, as demonstrated in a new study by Elisa Long and Robert Stavert from Yale University in the US. Their findings appear in the Journal of General Internal Medicine. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-04-shortcut-cost-effective-interventions-hiv.html HIV & AIDS 2013-04-15T11:40:01-07:00 UCLA scientists have shown that temporarily blocking a protein critical to immune response actually helps the body clear itself of chronic infection. Published in the April 12 edition of Science, the finding suggests new approaches to treating persistent viral infections like HIV and hepatitis C. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-04-potential-therapy-hiv-blocking-key.html HIV & AIDS 2013-04-11T15:39:07-07:00 A simple in-home training program for caregivers can give children of AIDS patients a better shot at prosperity by improving their early-childhood development, according to a study led by a Michigan State University researcher. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-04-kids-aids-patients-leg.html HIV & AIDS 2013-04-10T15:10:53-07:00