Colorado AIDS Project | Compassion Action Prevention
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Some people have a mutation that makes them amazingly resistant to HIV -- and now, scientists may have found a way to give that immunity to anyone. Viruses enter cells and take them over, but to get inside, they need a handhold. HIV pulls itself in by grabbing onto a protein called CCR5, which decorates the surface of T-cells, which are one of the two major types of white blood cells and play an important role in helping the body fight infections. Back in the 1990's, researchers took interest in a handful of promiscuous gay men who were able to engage in sexual relations with their HIV-positive partners with impunity. Most of them had a mutation that kept their cells from producing normal CCR5 protein. Click here to read the complete story on Wired {Image: A zinc finger nuclease clips the CCR5 gene out of a T-cell. Courtesy Sangamo Biosciences and Wired Magazine} |
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| If you are homeless and have HIV, getting access to HIV meds isn't enough. "If people don't have a place to take their medication, it's all for naught," argues Christine Campbell of Housing Works. But housing advocates fear that, in the big push to get life-saving pills into the hands of HIVers around the world, those HIVers' most urgent needs are being overlooked. To put housing issues at center stage, Housing Works and several other groups will hold a summit on homelessness at the International AIDS Conference in Mexico this August with advocates from Thailand, China, Kenya, South Africa and Canada. (Article from Housing Works) | |
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CDC NEEDS INCREASED FUNDING FOR HIV PREVENTION EFFORTS
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The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) need a $600 million increase in funding for effective HIV/AIDS prevention and surveillance programs, advocates said Monday at a briefing hosted by the AIDS Institute to assess the agency's efforts to fight HIV/AIDS in the U.S. The $600 million increase would nearly double CDC's current HIV/AIDS prevention budget. According to Julie Scofield, executive director of the National Alliance of State and Territorial AIDS Directors, CDC's HIV prevention and surveillance programs account for 3% of all federal HIV/AIDS funding. NASTAD members spend about 50% of the agency's $692 million domestic HIV prevention funding. Scofield said that HIV cases decreased by nearly 75% as CDC's budget increased between the late 1980s and early 1990s but that new cases remained stagnant when funding increases were halted. |
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RESEARCHERS DISCOVER R'ESERVOIR' THAT ALLOWS HIV TO REMAIN INFECTIONS DESPITE TREATMENT |
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Researchers at Brigham Young University and the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine have discovered a human cell "reservoir," called follicular dendritic cells, that allows HIV to stay in an infectious state and not respond to antiretroviral drugs. The research, which was funded by NIH and the American Foundation for AIDS Research, will be published in the June issue of the Journal of Virology. Researchers have long believed that there are reservoirs in the body that allow HIV to remain in an infectious state despite treatment. FDCs are the third reservoir to be identified. The other two reservoirs are macrophages and CD4+ T cells infected with a latent form of HIV. FDCs store material needed to maintain antibodies in the immune system and release proteins to trigger production of certain antibodies if they become low. |
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