HIV and sexual health charity, Terrence Higgins Trust (THT) is calling for people in Swindon to get involved in World AIDS Day (December 1) this year, either by attending an event, making a donation to support local HIV services, or wearing a red ribbon to raise awareness.

World AIDS Day, which has been running every December since 1988, is dedicated to raising awareness of HIV and AIDS. In the UK alone, over 80,000 people are living with HIV and over 7,000 are diagnosed every year.

Steve Jones, Regional Manager for THT in the South West, said: “World AIDS Day is one of the most important events in THT’s calendar. Currently in the UK one in four people with HIV don’t know they have it, so it’s vital that we continue to raise awareness. We hope local people will get involved in some way, either by attending an event, making a donation, or just wearing a red ribbon.”

Source
Terrence Higgins Trust

‘Prevention is the best cure’ is a common expression, but what happens if preventative measures are not used? A large proportion of pregnant Ugandan women are going out of their way not to be HIV tested, increasing the risk of mother-to-child transmission.

A recent paper by Larsson et al. in AIDS journal discussed how mother-to-child transmission of HIV can be easily and cost-effectively prevented using a short course of antiretroviral therapy. However, this is effective only if the mother is willing to be screened for HIV.

Anne Buve, a member of Faculty of 1000 Medicine, discusses the recent and “worrying” findings of this study, which she describes as “quite sobering”. There is currently an opt-out policy for HIV testing even though the HIV prevalence in Uganda is 6.4%.

One year after the implementation of the opt-out policy, fewer than 60% of pregnant women were tested for HIV in 2007 in the majority of countries in Eastern and Southern Africa, the exception being Botswana where voluntary counseling and subsequent testing rates are higher.

Programmes of syphilis screening during pregnancy already faced the same problem in Uganda. However, the authors of the study suggest that women who attended an antenatal clinic that did not have HIV testing on site, did so in order to avoid HIV testing. If confirmed, this finding is worrying.

More studies that identify and tackle the problems that exist with HIV screening need to be carried out, especially in parts of the world that have a high prevalence of HIV. Dr Buve goes on to say, “there should be more studies like this one that look into why people do not have access to or refuse to accept interventions that could prevent HIV infection among their offspring”.

Source: Steve Pogonowski

Faculty of 1000: Biology and Medicine

IV is a virus related to HIV that can infect monkeys. In some strains of monkey (which are known as natural hosts) SIV does not cause disease, whereas it does in others (which are known as susceptible hosts). It is hoped that understanding why SIV does not cause disease in natural hosts will provide insight into how to control HIV infection of humans. Two independent research teams, one led by Michaela C. Müller-Trutwin, and the other led by Guido Silvestri, Ashley Haase, and David Kelvin, have now determined that SIV induces vigorous activation of the immune system, in particular upregulation of genes stimulated by immune molecules known as IFNs, in both natural and susceptible hosts, but strikingly, the responses are later brought under control only in the former. In an accompanying commentary, Nina Bhardwaj and Olivier Manches, at New York University Langone Medical Center, New York, discuss how the lessons learned from these studies might impact HIV vaccine design and therapy.

TITLE: Global genomic analysis reveals rapid control of a robust innate response in SIV-infected sooty mangabeys

View this article at: http://www.jci.org/articles/view/40115?key=oNmMSIkn4H9JdUJ72v6a

ACCOMPANYING ARTICLE
TITLE: Nonpathogenic SIV infection of African green monkeys induces a strong but rapidly controlled type I IFN response

View this article at: http://www.jci.org/articles/view/40093?key=8rqR89T5BZYeJ7KuHW55

ACCOMPANYING COMMENTARY
TITLE: Resolution of immune activation defines nonpathogenic SIV infection

View this article at: http://www.jci.org/articles/view/41509?key=YH73bnLajqEZK6CETk0O

Source: Karen Honey

Journal of Clinical Investigation