Treating HIV also prevents its spread, study finds

Provocative new research shows that treating people with the AIDS virus can provide a powerful bonus: It cuts the risk that they will infect others.....

Anti-AIDS gel may help prevent infection

Breakthrough study finds microbicide cuts women's risk in half



For the first time, a vaginal gel has proved capable of blocking the AIDS virus: It cut in half a woman's chances of getting HIV from an infected partner in a study in South Africa. Scientists called it a breakthrough in the long quest for a tool to help women whose partners won't use condoms........

Most men in long-term study of HIV report low use of illicit drugs

AIDS 2010 Follow-Up Coverage: Global HIV/AIDS...IV/AIDS Studies, Releases


Media outlets continued to reflect on news from the International AIDS Conference-AIDS 2010, which attracted over 19,000 participants from 197 countries to Vienna last week, according to the conference blog

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Vaccines; Global HIV/AIDS Patient Survey

Therapeutic HIV vaccines show promise

Clinical trials hint that treatment strategy is not a dead end.

The world buzzed last week with news that an antiretroviral gel can halve the incidence of HIV infection in women.


But a quieter buzz could be heard at the International AIDS Conference (AIDS 2010) in Vienna, where the gel results were unveiled. At a special session, included in the program at the last minute, attendees heard the results of a handful of successful, but small, early-phase clinical trials for therapeutic vaccines--once thought to be a dead end for tackling HIV.


Normal vaccines are designed to prevent infections, but so far none has worked for HIV. Therapeutic vaccines, in contrast, aim to treat infected people--in the case of HIV, by boosting ravaged immune systems. Initial clinical trials in the 1990s were disappointing, however, and the vaccines fell from scientific fashion.


Drug combinations that decrease viral concentrations have become the main method of treating HIV, but they do not completely suppress the underlying disease. "They leave patients with a level of harmful immune activation, which can cause premature aging," says Joep Lange, a clinical virologist from the University of Amsterdam and a former president of the International AIDS Society. "The therapeutic vaccine approach may help with this," he says, by modifying immune responses.......

Non-human primate study generates information relevant to HIV-1 vaccine strategies

Monkeys repeatedly immunized with a particular form the HIV-1 envelope glycoprotein generated antibodies capable of neutralizing diverse strains of HIV-1, according to a paper published online in the Journal of Experimental Medicine on August 2.....