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HIV/AIDS

Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) was first reported in the United States in 1981 and has since become a major worldwide epidemic. AIDS is caused by the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). By killing or impairing cells of the immune system, HIV progressively destroys the body's ability to fight infections and certain cancers. Individuals diagnosed with AIDS are susceptible to life-threatening diseases called opportunistic infections, which are caused by microbes that usually do not cause illness in healthy people.

More than 600,000 cases of AIDS have been reported in the United States since 1981, and as many as 900,000 Americans may be infected with HIV. The epidemic is growing most rapidly among minority populations and is a leading killer of African-American males. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the prevalence of AIDS is six times higher in African-Americans and three times higher among Hispanics than among whites.
See more info at: < a href="http://www.niaid.nih.gov/daids/prevention/info.htm"> http://www.niaid.nih.gov/daids/prevention/info.htm

Ex-exec dedicates nonprofit to stop HIV
by Steve Johnson, MEDIANEWS - Inside Bay Area.com - Saturday October 07, 2006
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Donald Francis has spent a quarter century trying to help people with HIV, devoting most of those years to developing a vaccine against the deadly virus.

Trained as a pediatrician with an expertise in infectious diseases, Francis directed the World Health Organization's smallpox eradication efforts in the Sudan and in Northern India, before joining the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 1971. Among other things, he directed the CDC's AIDS laboratory and was the agency's California liaison on AIDS.

But the job proved frustrating. Francis became fed up with what he regarded as the federal government's foot-dragging on the disease. His battles with the Reagan administration over the matter eventually were chronicled in the book, "And the Band Played On."

AIDS vaccine eludes scientists
by GEORGE E. JORDAN - Newhouse News Service - Sunday July 23, 2006
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After 25 years and countless billions of research dollars, some of the nation's top scientists say a vaccine that provides immunity against the virus that causes AIDS the best hope of curbing the epidemic may never happen.

Despite breakthroughs in treatment for those already infected, researchers have hit one obstacle after another in efforts to develop a vaccine, which is seen as the holy grail of AIDS research.

"It would be the greatest good we could do for mankind," said Ronald Desrosiers, a pioneering researcher affiliated with Harvard University. He is not optimistic: "It's seriously questionable whether there will ever be an effective vaccine for HIV," the human immunodeficiency virus which causes AIDS.

Monkeys Vaccinated Against SIV Survive Longer After Infection
Science Daily.com - Friday June 09, 2006
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Results of two new studies sponsored by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), a component of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), suggest that even if an HIV vaccine offers imperfect protection against the virus, it might provide vaccinated individuals with an important benefit: a significant survival advantage after infection.

Such a survival advantage was observed in monkey studies conducted by two teams of researchers, one led by Norman L. Letvin, M.D., of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Harvard Medical School and the NIAID Vaccine Research Center (VRC), and the other by Mario Roederer, Ph.D., of the VRC. The researchers found that monkeys vaccinated against simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV) -- a close relative of HIV that causes an AIDS-like disease in monkeys -- and then exposed to the virus survived significantly longer than unvaccinated animals exposed to SIV.

Biggest AIDS Vaccine Trial Yet
by ARIANA EUNJUNG CHA - Washington Post - Monterey (Calif.) Herald - Tuesday May 23, 2006
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CHONBURI, Thailand - Inside a ramshackle Buddhist temple here on the country's southeastern coast, curious villagers gathered last fall as part of the United States' biggest gamble yet on stopping the AIDS pandemic.

The informational meeting was almost like a game show as attractive young hosts revved up the crowd, working up to the big question, boomed out over loudspeakers: Would the audience be willing to volunteer to test an experimental HIV vaccine?

The villagers hesitated. No one moved for a full 60 seconds. Then, tentatively, they approached the three stands set up at the front, marked 'Join,' 'Not Join' and 'Unsure.'

For the past three years, such gatherings have been held all over Thailand, exhorting young adults to take part in the largest, most expensive, most resource-intensive AIDS vaccine trial ever. Funded by the National Institutes of Health, it ultimately will involve 16,000 people and last 3ﾽ years.

But as the trial moves fo...

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