US HIV Infections Underestimated

(ATLANTA) — The number of Americans infected by the AIDS virus each year is much higher than the government has been estimating, U.S. health officials reported Sunday, acknowledging that their numbers have understated the level of the epidemic.
The country had roughly 56,300 new HIV infections in 2006 — a dramatic increase from the 40,000 annual [...]

Progress made in HIV prevention

HIV has proved adept at foiling drugs

There have been significant gains in preventing new HIV infections in a number of heavily-affected countries, a United Nations programme report says.
However, UNAids warns the Aids epidemic is not over in any part of the world.
The report says prevention programmes have seen changes in sexual behaviour, and a drop [...]

Genetic Variant Raises HIV Risk

There’s no doubt Africans have borne the brunt of the AIDS epidemic. Now researchers in London and Texas say it may have something to do with a single gene variant that could account for 11%, or about 2.5 million, of Africa’s HIV cases.

Published in the journal Cell Host & Microbe, the findings center around one [...]

HIV funding priority shift call

Sub-Saharan Africa has high rates of HIV infection

Funding for HIV prevention is being wasted on strategies which have little impact, say US researchers who call for a “dramatic shift” in priorities.
Substantial investment in condom promotion, HIV testing and vaccine research has had limited success in Africa, they argue in Science.
Instead male circumcision and reducing multiple [...]

Treatment ’slashes baby HIV risk’

Antiretroviral drugs cut the risk of mother-to-baby transmission

Appropriate treatment can all but eradicate the risk that a pregnant woman with HIV will pass the virus to her child, research shows.
Data on 5,151 HIV pregnancies in the UK and Ireland between 2000 and 2006 found an infant infection rate of just 1.2% where preventative steps were [...]

HIV drug resistance target find

The virus has proved adept at foiling drugs

A specific protein in the body may be the key to overcoming the increasing problem of resistance to HIV drugs.
Inactivating the ITK protein which is involved in the immune response blocks many steps of HIV replication, studies in the laboratory show.
Most current HIV drugs attack the virus itself [...]