Randomized clinical trials conducted by researchers in Rakai, Uganda, have revealed a link between the size of foreskin surface area and the risk of male HIV acquisition. The results of the trials have been published in the current issue of AIDS, the leading journal in the field of HIV and AIDS research. The journal is published by Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, a part of Wolters Kluwer Health, a leading provider of information and business intelligence for students, professionals, and institutions in medicine, nursing, allied health, and pharmacy.

In recent years, several studies have shown that circumcision reduces the risk of male HIV acquisition by 50-60%, and circumcision is now recommended by WHO/United Nations Joint Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) as an HIV prevention strategy. Based on this evidence that the foreskin increases vulnerability to HIV, Dr Godfrey Kigozi and his colleagues hypothesized that the size of the foreskin might be related to the risk of HIV infection.

Eligible candidates for this retrospective cohort study were drawn from the initially HIV-negative participants in the Rakai Community Cohort Study. These men were subsequently enrolled into the randomized trials of male circumcision and had measurement of their foreskin surface area taken following surgery. The researchers then determined HIV acquisition in these men and assessed the association between foreskin size measured after surgery, and the incidence of HIV acquisition while under surveillance prior to circumcision. Their results determined that the risk of male HIV acquisition was significantly increased in men with larger foreskin surface areas.

The researchers point out that their study is unique and their findings therefore need to be replicated. However, these results, in addition to the observational studies and randomized trials, add plausibility to the hypothesis that the foreskin is a tissue vulnerable to HIV acquisition.

About AIDS

AIDS publishes the very latest ground breaking research on HIV and AIDS. Read by all the top clinicians and researchers, AIDS has the highest impact of all AIDS-related journals. With 18 issues per year, AIDS guarantees the authoritative presentation of significant advances. The Editors, themselves noted international experts, are committed to making AIDS the most distinguished and innovative journal in the field.

About Lippincott Williams & Wilkins

Lippincott Williams & Wilkins (LWW) is a leading international publisher for healthcare professionals and students with nearly 300 periodicals and 1,500 books in more than 100 disciplines publishing under the LWW brand, as well as content-based sites and online corporate and customer services.

LWW is part of Wolters Kluwer Health, a leading provider of information and business intelligence for students, professionals and institutions in medicine, nursing, allied health and pharmacy. Major brands include traditional publishers of medical and drug reference tools and textbooks, such as Lippincott Williams & Wilkins and Facts & Comparisons®; and electronic information providers, such as Ovid®, UpToDate®, Medi-Span® and ProVation® Medical.

Source
Wolters Kluwer Health

Michael Saag, M.D., director of the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) Center for AIDS Research and a renowned leader in the establishment of best practices for human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) treatment, has been installed as chair of the board of directors of the HIV Medicine Association (HIVMA).

HIVMA is the largest professional society of physicians, scientists and health-care professionals dedicated to the field of HIV and AIDS. The organization actively promotes quality in HIV care and advocates for policies that ensure a science-based, comprehensive and humane response to the AIDS pandemic, including adequate funding for HIV research, prevention, care and provider training and resources.

A professor of medicine, Saag also directs UAB’s Division of Infectious Diseases. He is on the board of directors of the International AIDS Society-USA, and he helped author U.S. Department of Health and Human Services guidelines for antiretroviral treatments and edits the Sanford Guide to HIV/AIDS Therapy. Saag will serve a one-year term with HIVMA that ends November 2010.

Saag is credited with being the first to demonstrate the value of viral-load testing in a clinical practice. This test allows physicians to follow the response to antiretroviral treatment, just as they follow the blood-sugar response to insulin when treating diabetics. He also is among the first to perform clinical trials of several antiretroviral drugs that are approved worldwide.

Saag helped establish UAB’s 1917 Clinic, a comprehensive HIV outpatient clinic devoted to patient care and clinical-trial coordination. Opened in 1988, the clinic has grown into a hub for HIV basic science and treatment-outcomes research at UAB.

He has authored dozens of scientific manuscripts, contributed more than 50 chapters to medical textbooks and served on the editorial board of the journal AIDS Research and Human Retrovir uses. He also has served on subspecialty committees of the American Board of Internal Medicine and the American College of Physicians.

Saag earned his medical degree from the University of Louisville in Kentucky and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at UAB. He is the Jim Straley Chair in AIDS Research and an active member of the American Society of Clinical Investigation.

About the HIV Medicine Association

The HIV Medicine Association (HIVMA) is the professional home for more than 3,600 physicians, scientists and other health-care professionals dedicated to the field of HIV/AIDS. A part of the Infectious Diseases Society of America, HIVMA promotes quality in HIV care and advocates policies that ensure a comprehensive and humane response to the AIDS pandemic informed by science and social justice. For more information, visit http://www.hivma.org.

About the UAB Center for AIDS Research

The UAB Center for AIDS Research (CFAR) is one of the seven original centers established in 1988 by the federal government to stimulate research and advances in fighting AIDS and HIV. CFAR supports prevention and HIV-patient care at the 1917 Clinic and in Africa through a partnership with the Center for Infectious Disease Research in Zambia.

Source
University of Alabama at Birmingham

Four scientists have been selected as this year’s winners of the Avant-Garde Award for HIV/AIDS research, the National Institute on Drug Abuse, part of the National Institutes of Health, announced today. The annual award competition, now in its second year, is intended to stimulate high-impact research that may lead to groundbreaking opportunities for the prevention and treatment of HIV/AIDS in drug abusers. Winning scientists receive $500,000 per year, plus associated facilities and administrative costs, for five years to support their research.

The four awardees will undertake diverse approaches in their research on HIV. One scientist will investigate the interactions that occur between HIV-infected and uninfected cells during intravenous transmission. Another researcher is developing new strategies to restore the immune system of HIV-infected individuals. The third will work on developing a new technology that exploits a silencing mechanism to block HIV transcription. The last will focus on identifying and eliminating latent HIV infection. This collective research will further NIDA’s work to learn more about the pivotal role of drug abuse in the spread of HIV/AIDS and to develop effective strategies to prevent and treat this disease.

The Avant-Garde Awards are modeled after the NIH Pioneer Awards and are granted to scientists of exceptional creativity who propose high-impact research that will open new avenues for prevention and treatment of HIV/AIDS among drug abusers. “By supporting bold investigators with unexplored ideas, we hope we can find new approaches to eradicating the terrible public health toll of HIV/AIDS,” said NIH Director Francis Collins.

“This year’s Avant-Garde recipients proposed some especially exciting research directions,” said NIDA Director Nora D. Volkow, who announced the awards. “These studies of fundamental processes in HIV infection should move us ahead by leaps and bounds in our efforts to find solutions to HIV/AIDS.”

The Avant-Garde Awardees were selected from 39 applicants whose proposals reflect diverse scientific disciplines and approaches to HIV/AIDS research. The Avant-Garde Awards were granted to the following researchers:

Awardee: Benjamin K. Chen, M.D., Ph.D., assistant professor in the Department of Infectious Diseases at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York, is an investigator of exceptional vision and promise. He developed methodology that enables visualization of fluorescently tagged HIV virus particles that may answer long-standing questions about cell-cell mechanisms of viral transmission.

Project: Imaging Virological Synapses During Parenteral HIV Transmission

The understanding of how the HIV virus spreads among injection drug users is limited by a poor understanding of the first events that occur following HIV transmission. This research uses sensitive virus tagging approaches and mouse models with humanized immune systems to study the sequence of interactions between HIV-infected cells and uninfected cells. These studies may lead to the development of vaccines or other preventive approaches to inhibit these initial interactions that occur during intravenous transmission.

Awardee: Dana H. Gabuzda, M.D., is a professor of neurology (microbiology) at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School, in Boston. Dr. Gabuzda is a leading researcher in the areas of HIV molecular biology and pathogenesis, particularly neuropathogenesis. Her cutting-edge research has significantly increased understanding of HIV replication and pathogenesis.

Project: Systems Biology of Immune Reconstitution in HIV/AIDS

A major challenge in HIV research is to restore immune function in HIV-infected individuals. HIV infection depletes CD4 T cells, leading to immunodeficiency and death. Highly active anti-retroviral therapy (HAART) restores CD4 T cell counts to normal levels in a majority of individuals who achieve suppression of HIV to undetectable levels. However, the magnitude of CD4 T cell recovery is variable and many people on HAART have poor CD4 T cell recovery. The research will lead to a better understanding of the mechanisms that determine CD4 T cell restoration in IV drug abusers and other populations infected with HIV, and may identify new therapeutic strategies to improve restoration of immune function in these populations.

Awardee: Jonathan Karn, Ph.D., is a professor and chairman of molecular biology and microbiology at Case Western Reserve University, in Cleveland. Dr. Karn is a creative molecular biologist whose research on novel therapeutic technologies could have an impact on the HIV/AIDS epidemic worldwide.

Project: Manipulating Epigenetic Control Mechanisms to Control HIV Transcription

Most individuals treated with antiretroviral drugs have little to no detectable HIV in their blood, however, this does not mean that the virus has been cleared from the body. Unfortunately, the virus can re-emerge, leading to renewed active infections when treatment stops or fails. This research will focus on finding natural mechanisms that could block HIV replication and provide long-lasting suppression of HIV.

Awardee: Rafick-Pierre Sekaly, Ph.D., scientific director and co-director of the Oregon Health and Science University Vaccine and Gene Therapy Institute in Portland is an internationally recognized leader in the field of human immunology and translational medicine, specifically the immune response to HIV infection.

Project: Novel Concepts for the Eradication of HIV

The HIV-1 reservoir is a small pool of persistent long-lived and latently infected resting memory CD4 T cells. Eradication of this HIV reservoir is one of the last steps to be conquered in order to develop a cure for this disease. Dr. Sekaly’s research will probe for a mechanism explaining the existence of HIV reservoirs. His studies of pathways that can be targeted to purge HIV from its reservoir could ultimately lead to novel immunological interventions for the treatment of HIV.

NIDA’s HIV/AIDS Research Program supports a multidisciplinary portfolio that investigates the role of drug use and its related behaviors in the evolving dynamics of HIV/AIDS epidemiology, natural history/pathogenesis, treatment, and prevention. http://www.drugabuse.gov/AIDS.

For further information about the Avant-Garde Award, please visit the NIDA Avant-Garde Award Web site at http://drugabuse.gov/avgp.html. Information about the FY10 Avant-Garde award will be posted on this site soon.

Source
The National Institute on Drug Abuse

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“The first clinical trial of an HIV/AIDS vaccine designed and developed in South Africa was launched in Cape Town” Monday, the SAPA/The Times reports. The trial will seek to determine the immune response of HIV-negative people to two experimental vaccines — SAAVI DNA-C2 and SAAVI MVA-C (7/20).

Similar tests of the vaccine began in the U.S. earlier this year, the AP/Washington Post reports. The University of Cape Town developed the experimental vaccines with technical assistance and manufacturing of the vaccine provided by the NIH, according to Anthony Mbewu, president of South Africa’s Medical Research Council. “With 5.2 million already infected and with hundreds getting infected every day despite all the condom distribution and behavioral education programs, we know that a vaccine really is what we need,” Mbewu said, adding, “When the next influenza pandemic hits the world, every country will be scrambling to develop a vaccine … so it is important that countries like South Africa have the technology and capacity to develop vaccines and the industry to manufacture them” (Faul, 7/20).

Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, called the partnership between South Africa and the U.S. “the most important AIDS research partnership in the world,” but cautioned the years ahead would prove challenging as researchers test the safety and efficacy of the HIV vaccine, the AP/Google.com reports.

“South Africa was the site of the biggest setback to AIDS vaccine research, when the most promising vaccine ever, produced by Merck & Co. and tested here in 2007, found that people who got the vaccine were more likely to contract HIV than those who did not,” the news service writes, adding that “AIDS vaccine research is so filled with disappointments some activists are questioning the wisdom of continuing such expensive investments. They say the money might be better spent on prevention and education” (Faul, 7/20).

This information was reprinted from globalhealth.kff.org with kind permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. You can view the entire Kaiser Daily Global Health Policy Report, search the archives and sign up for email delivery at globalhealth.kff.org.

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