The Global Peace Coalition is honoring President George W. Bush for his “unprecedented level of contribution” to the fight against HIV/AIDS as U.S. president during the Saddleback Civil Forum in Washington D.C. Global on Monday, World AIDS Day.

“No U.S. president or political leader has done more for global health than this administration,” said Dr. Rick Warren, founding pastor of Saddleback Church in southern California, noting that the conservative Bush “has raised the bar on America’s role and responsibility for providing critical humanitarian assistance around the world.”

Warren said that over the past eight years, the President and Mrs. Bush, both evangelical Christians, have traveled around the world to bring awareness and solutions to the HIV/AIDS pandemic.

President Bush will be the first recipient of the “International Medal of PEACE” from the Global PEACE Coalition.

The award is given on behalf of the Global Peace Coalition to individuals that exemplify outstanding contribution towards alleviating the five global problems recognized by the coalition: pandemic diseases, illiteracy, self-centered leadership and spiritual emptiness.

The Coalition is a network of churches, businesses and individuals working together to solve humanitarian issues.

Under the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), crafted by President Bush and his aides, more than $18.8 billion has been provided to combat global HIV/AIDS during the last five years.

Congress authorized an additional $48 billion for ongoing efforts to tackle the HIV/AIDS pandemic as well as tuberculosis and malaria – the other deadly killers in third world countries – over the next five years.

Warren, in addition to presenting the president with the award, will also engage both President Bush and First Lady Laura Bush in candid conversations regarding past accomplishments and priorities in the future regarding international health issues – including HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria.

– by Gene J. Koprowski, Editorial Director, and Nancy Bruening, Executive Editor

President Bush, First Lady recognized by Rick Warren for AIDS policy.

Posted: November 29th, 2008 under Diseases, HIV.
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The pathogen that causes AIDS may be eliminated in 10 years if all people living in countries with high infection rates are regularly tested and treated, according to a new study.

The proposed solution to end the AIDS epidemic is compelling. But, experts said, it is based on assumptions rather than simply data data, and is suffused with logistical problems. The study was published online Tuesday in the medical journal, The Lancet.

“It’s quite a startling result,” said Charlie Gilks, an AIDS treatment expert at the World Health Organization (WHO), and one of the paper’s authors. “In a relatively short amount of time, we could potentially knock the epidemic on its head.”

– by Gene J. Koprowski, Editorial Director, and Nancy Bruening, Executive Editor

Posted: November 26th, 2008 under Diseases, HIV.
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An HIV-1 vaccine designed to stimulate cell-mediated immunity is “no better than placebo” in preventing HIV infection in individuals at high risk of contracting the disease, according to a study published this week in The Lancet.

The Lancet is one of the world’s leading medical journals.

Dr. Susan P. Buchbinder, MD, from the San Francisco Department of Public Health, and colleagues randomly assigned 3,000 HIV-negative individuals to three injections of the MRKAd5 HIV-1 vaccine made in adenovirus type 5, Ad5, and designed to elicit cell-mediated immunity, or placebo.

Doctors found that among patients with low Ad5 antibody titers at baseline, 24, or 3 percent, of 741 vaccine recipients and 21, 3 percent, of 762 placebo recipients became infected with HIV-1.

Plasma HIV-1 RNA levels were similar in the placebo and vaccine groups, according to Dr. Buchbinder’s research.

– by Gene J. Koprowski, Editorial Director, and Nancy Bruening, Executive Editor

Image courtesy of 3DScience.com.

Posted: November 14th, 2008 under Developing Diseases, Diseases, HIV, Impaired Immunity.
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A local judge in the Dutch city of Groningen has handed down sentences of nine and five years to the two of the accused men in what has become known as the Groningen HIV case.

The trial of these men centered on charges that they drugged, then raped and deliberately infected other men with HIV - the virus that leads to AIDS - at a number of  outlandish “sex parties” in the Netherlands.

One of the defendants was jailed for nine years, another to five years, while a third man will be released immediately.

The trial began a month ago, and the court ruled there was dispositive evidence of the two main suspects having attempted to cause grievous bodily harm.

According to the court, the criminals injected five men with HIV-infected blood at sex parties hosted by the accused. They did so, according to the court “even though they themselves had personally experienced what the far-reaching consequences of infection are.”

The prosecutor had asked for terms of 15 years against the main two suspects and one of eight for the third man.

– by Gene J. Koprowski, Editorial Director and Nancy Bruening, Executive Editor

Assault with a deadly weapon — HIV.

Posted: November 13th, 2008 under Diseases, HIV, Impaired Immunity.
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Doctors have engineered T cells able to recognize HIV-1 strains that have evaded the immune system.

The findings of the study, published online in the journal Nature Medicine, have important implications for developing new treatments for HIV, especially for patients with chronic infection who fail to respond to antiretroviral therapies.

Viruses hijack the machinery of host cells to replicate and spread infection. When cells are infected with a virus, they expose small parts of the virus on their surface, offering a molecular fingerprint called an epitope for killer T-cells from the immune system to see.

This starts an immune response, eliminating the virus and any cells involved in its production. The HIV virus has the ability to mutate quickly, swiftly disguising its fingerprints to allow it to hide from T-cells.

T cells recognize their targets through weak molecular interactions mediated by the T cell receptor. Through a molecular process, the investigators were able to isolate a group of T cell receptor encoding genes that bind to HIV-1.

“Not only could T cells engineered to express the strongly binding T cell receptor see HIV strains that had escaped detection by natural T cells, but the engineered T cells responded in a much more vigorous fashion so that far fewer T cells were required to control infection,” says James Riley, PhD, research associate professor of pathology and laboratory medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.

– by Gene J. Koprowski, Editorial Director

Posted: November 10th, 2008 under Diseases, HIV.
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A new study by doctors at the Montpellier Institute of Molecular Genetics in France shows how an HIV vaccine may actually have enhanced HIV infection rates amongst patients.

The study, by Dr. Matthieu Perreau, is being published online in the Journal of Experimental Medicine.

The HIV-1 vaccine used in Merck’s STEP trial utilized a weakened form of a common cold virus, Adenovirus 5 (Ad5), to carry parts of HIV into the body.

This triggered the immune system to fight off later infection with the virus.

Three years after the trial began, however, researchers realized that more of the vaccine recipients who had prior immunity to adenoviruses had been infected with HIV than those without that immunity.

The new study shows how the presence of long-lasting Ad5-specific antibodies—generated during natural infections with adenoviruses—may have altered the immune response to the HIV vaccine.

In the presence of antibodies from Ad5-immune individuals, HIV infection spread through cell cultures three times faster than usual.

Merck’s vaccine may have made it to phase II trials because primates, used in the phase 1 trials, don’t naturally come in contact with human adenoviruses, and therefore the potential problem went unrecognized.

– by Gene J. Koprowski, Editorial Director, and Nancy Bruening, Executive Editor

Did the HIV vaccine do more harm than good?

Posted: November 3rd, 2008 under Diseases, HIV.
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Females have the highest rate of HIV/AIDS infections in Tanzania, according to a new report. The study was published by the Tanzania Commission for AIDS (TACAIDS), and research was lead by Dr. Fatma Mrisho.

Dr. Mrisho said that current figures show that 7 percent of women are HIV-positive while men account for 5 percent.

“The high rate of HIV/AIDS infections in women is caused by men who have multiple concurrent partners thus infecting more and more women,” she said.

Dr. Mrisho said the current number of HIV/AIDS cases and related figures are a hindrance to national development.

“The survey indicates that out of 33 million people in the country more than 2 million people are HIV-positive. The state of the epidemic needs our concerted efforts as a team to contain and mitigate the effects of the epidemic,” she said.

Dr. Mrisho said that a technical review of the district and community health services has shown a definite improvement in the state of the health services.

“There are very practical recommendations on the way forward and in my opinion…. many of them are doable,” she said.

– by Gene J. Koprowski, Editorial Director, and Nancy Bruening, Executive Editor

New study provides details on HIV in Tanzania.

Posted: October 31st, 2008 under Diseases, HIV.
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A new report from the health ministry indicates that the number of people in Iran who have been infected with the AIDS virus has reached 18,320 people, a 30 percent increase on the 2007 figures.

“So far 1,592 of the infected people have developed AIDS… and 2,800 have died,” said the ministry report.

Intravenous drug use is still the main cause of infection at 80.8 percent. Sexual contact accounted for 11.9 percent of cases, according to the report.

A total of 93.7 percent of those infected were men.

Iranian health officials have warned of the dangers of a rise in infections with the HIV amid a surge in intravenous drug usage.

Doctors estimate Iran has two million drug users in a population of more than 71 million.

The Muslim land is situated on a major drug trafficking route from the opium fields of Afghanistan to the wealthy consumer markets of Europe and the Persian Gulf.

– by Gene J. Koprowski, Editorial Director

Iranian president — and former hostage taker — Ahaminejad.

Posted: October 14th, 2008 under Diseases, HIV.
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Scientists have discovered the human antibodies that appear in the aftermath of HIV infection and have concluded that they are incapable of defending against the invading virus.

The discovery is the latest finding from scientists at Duke University’s Center for HIV/AIDS Vaccine and Immunology (CHAVI).

The study relied upon a repository of plasma donor blood samples that were collected every three days - before, during and after HIV plasma viral load ramp-up in acute infection. Since the samples were held for weeks to complete HIV and hepatitis B and C testing, researchers were able to track the immune response from the moment of infection until weeks after transmission.

Dr. Georgia Tomaras, the lead author of the study appearing in the Journal of Virology, says the earliest immune response to HIV infection comes in the form of antibody-coated viruses comes eight days after the virus reaches measurable levels in plasma.

For most infections, formation of antibody-coated virus particles is the first step in controlling infection.

“Mathematical modeling tells us these early antibodies do not slow the spread of the virus” says Tomaras. “We are conducting additional studies to determine if these early antibodies may actually be encouraging viral replication or if they could be useful in greater numbers to stop the infection”

Researchers believe additional virus-fighting B cells, or antibodies, show up over time.

– by Gene J. Koprowski, Editorial Director and Nancy Bruening, Executive Editor

Posted: October 9th, 2008 under Diseases, HIV.
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Researchers at the University of Missouri, after improving the sensitivity of nuclear magnetic resonance imaging technoogy (NMR), watched as the HIV-1 protease matured from an inactive form into an active infection. This process has never been directly visualized before. The findings appear in the journal Nature.

“We actually saw the process occur,” said Chun Tang, assistant professor of biochemistry in the MU School of Medicine. “This is something that has never been done before. We now understand more about the maturation process. We hope this will be a stepping stone to intervening before the infection progresses.”

The HIV-1 protease is responsible for releasing the essential building blocks of an infective HIV-1 viral particle, the culprit of AIDS. The HIV-1 protease is one of the primary targets of therapeutic treatment. However, the viral enzyme is constantly mutating in an effort to gain drug resistance.

“HIV-1 protease is not an active enzyme when it is first expressed in cells. It has to be activated to do its job,” Tang said. “What we were able to see is how it self-activates from an immature form when the virus is not infective into a mature form when the virus gains infectivity.”

Tang and his associates used a novel NMR method called paramagnetic resonance relaxation enhancement and were able to see the temporary joining of two halves of HIV-1 protease precursor, something that had not been accessible before using conventional techniques.

The scientists discovered that the “tail,” or the flanking amino acid residues, of the HIV-1 protease precursor go through a temporarily formed tunnel where the tail is cut off.

– by Gene J. Koprowski, Editorial Director

Scientists are learning more about HIV-1 with nuclear magnetic resonance imaging.

Posted: October 3rd, 2008 under Diseases, HIV.
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