Tag Archives: hiv

Scientists find missing clue to how HIV hacks cells to propagate itself

Computer modeling has helped a team of scientists, including several scholars from the University of Chicago, to decode previously unknown details about the process by which HIV forces cells to spread the virus to other cells. The findings, published Nov. 7 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, may offer a new avenue for drugs to combat the virus. (more…)

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Findings Show How AIDS Spread Across North America

A new technique that allowed researchers to analyze genetic material from serum samples of HIV patients taken before AIDS was known provides a glimpse into the beginnings of the epidemic.

Researchers at the University of Arizona and the University of Cambridge in the U.K. have reconstructed the origins of the AIDS pandemic in unprecedented detail. (more…)

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Defeating drug resistance is all about the strategy

Scientists are locked in a perpetual race with deadly bacteria, struggling to come up with new drugs as bacteria evolve new defenses. Corey Compton has demonstrated that a strategy focused on how bacteria develop resistance can give drugs — new and old — a leg up. (more…)

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Web app prompts important sexual health testing

ANN ARBOR — A personalized web app designed to encourage young men at risk for sexually transmitted diseases to go for testing has proven successful in a small trial conducted in Southeast Michigan.

Researchers at the University of Michigan’s Center for Sexuality & Health Disparities developed the web-based program called “Get Connected” to encourage young men who have sex with men to get tested for HIV and other sexually transmitted infections, including chlamydia, gonorrhea and syphilis. (more…)

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Memory loss associated with Alzheimer’s reversed for first time

Small trial by UCLA and Buck Institute succeeds using ‘systems approach’ to memory disorders

Patient 1 had two years of progressive memory loss. She was considering quitting her job, which involved analyzing data and writing reports, she got disoriented driving, and she mixed up the names of her pets.

Patient 2 kept forgetting once-familiar faces at work, forgot his gym locker combination and had to have his assistants constantly remind him of his work schedule. (more…)

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All HIV not created equal: Scientists believe they can identify which viruses cause infection

ANN ARBOR — HIV-infected people carry many different HIV viruses and all have distinct personalities—some much more vengeful and infectious than others.

Yet, despite the breadth of infectivity, roughly 76 percent of HIV infections arise from a single virus. Now, scientists believe they can identify the culprit with very specific measurements of the quantities of a key protein in the HIV virus. (more…)

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HIV+ women respond well to HPV vaccine

A three-nation clinical trial found that a vaccine can safely help the vast majority of HIV-positive women produce antibodies against the cancer-causing human papillomavirus, even if their immune system is weak and even if they’ve had some prior HPV exposure.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — HIV-positive women respond well to a vaccine against the human papillomavirus (HPV), even when their immune system is struggling, according to newly published results of an international clinical trial. The study’s findings counter doubts about whether the vaccine would be helpful, said the Brown University medical professor who led the study. Instead, the data support the World Health Organization’s recommendation to vaccinate women with HIV. (more…)

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