Encouraging Health

HPV Virus

Circumcision not only protects against HIV in heterosexual men, but it also helps prevent two other sexually transmitted infections, a large new study found.

Circumcised males reduced their risk of infection with HPV, or human papillomavirus, by 35 percent and herpes by 28 percent. However, researchers found circumcision had no effect on the transmission of syphilis.

Landmark studies from three African countries including Uganda previously found circumcision lowered men’s chance of catching the AIDS virus by up to 60 percent. The new study stems from the Uganda research and looked at protection against three other STDs. The findings are reported in Thursday’s New England Journal of Medicine

An international team of researchers who conducted the study said circumcision, the surgical removal of the foreskin from the penis, should be an accepted method to reduce sexually transmitted infections among heterosexuals.

“It must be emphasized that protection was only partial, and it is critical to promote the practice of safe sex,” they wrote.

HPV can cause cervical cancer and genital warts. Herpes greatly increases the chances of infection with HIV.

The American Academy of Pediatrics previously said there was not enough evidence to recommend routine circumcision of infants. The doctor’s group is reviewing its position based on recent studies. About 2,800 herpes cases in newborns occur in the U.S. every year transmitted from mothers to infants that can lead to disability or death.

hiv/aids

With a large poor and minority population, the District of Columbia has struggled with HIV for decades. Its report on Monday showed the number of people with HIV infections rose 22 percent from 2006 to 2007.

“I think the true prevalence rate could be 30 to 50 percent higher,” Dr. Shannon Hader, the city’s HIV/AIDS Administration director, said in a telephone interview. Many people are likely infected without knowing it.

The report showed that 6.5 percent of the city’s black men were infected. Overall, there were 15,120 HIV-infected people. Blacks make up 53 percent of the population of just over half a million people, but account for 76 percent of infections.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Washington has one of the most severe epidemics in the nation.

“It’s an epidemic across all aspects of District life,” Whitman-Walker Clinic CEO Donald Blanchon said. “It’s not an epidemic of one group. It’s not just gay or black.”

Complex epidemic
Blanchon said people are being infected in three different ways, making it harder to target those at highest risk.

While sex between men was the top cause, accounting for 37 percent of cases, heterosexual sex led to 28 percent of cases and injection drug use to 18 percent, according to the report.

The city also released survey data highlighting the fact that many heterosexuals do not use condoms and have multiple, overlapping sexual partners.

“At the end of the day, there’s the need for individual responsibility. It doesn’t matter who you are, where you live, where you come from, what your (sexual) orientation is,” Blanchon said. “You need to practice safe sex.”

Instead of infiltrating breaks in the skin, HIV appears to attack normal, healthy genital tissue in women, U.S. researchers said on Tuesday in a study that offers new insight into how the AIDS virus spreads.

They said researchers had assumed the human immunodeficiency virus, or HIV, sought out beaks in the skin, such as a herpes sore, in order to gain access to immune system cells deeper in the tissue.

Some had even thought the normal lining of the vaginal tract offered a barrier to invasion by the virus during sexual intercourse.

“Normal skin is vulnerable,” said Thomas Hope of Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine said in a telephone interview.

“It was previously thought there had to be a break in it somehow,” said Hope, who is presenting his findings at the American Society for Cell Biology meeting in San Francisco.

He said until now, scientists had little understanding of the details of how HIV is transmitted sexually in women.

Hope and colleagues at Northwestern in Chicago and Tulane University in New Orleans developed a new method for seeing the virus at work. They studied newly removed vaginal tissue taken from hysterectomy surgeries, and introduced the virus which carried fluorescent, light-activated tracers.

Then they watched under a microscope as the virus penetrated the outer lining of the female genital tract, called the squamous epithelium. They also observed this same process in non-human primates.

In both cases, they found HIV was able to quickly move past the genital skin barrier to reach immune cells, which the virus targets.

Hope said the study suggests the virus takes aim at places in the skin that had recently shed skin cells, in much the same way that skin on the body flakes off.

The finding casts doubt on the prior theory of the virus requiring a break in the skin or gained access through a single layer of skin cells that line the cervical canal.

And it might explain why some prevention efforts have failed. Hope said one clinical trial in Africa in which women used a diaphragm to block the cervix had no effect at reducing transmission of the virus. Nor have studies of drugs designed to prevent lesions in genital herpes proven effective.

Hope said the findings emphasize the need for treatments such as a vaccine to prevent infection.

And it makes clear the need for the use of condoms, which are highly effective at preventing infection.

“People need to remember that they are vulnerable,” Hope said. “The sad part is if people just used a condom, we wouldn’t have this problem,” he said.

In the United States, HIV is mostly passed among men who have sex with men. Females account for 26 percent of all new HIV cases in the United States, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Globally, HIV is more commonly spread by heterosexual sex. The virus has infected 33 million people globally and has killed 25 million.

‘It’s a violation of human rights,’ says official from Indonesian province

An Indonesian province beleaguered by a spiraling HIV infection rate scrapped plans to implant microchips in those with full-blown AIDS, following strong opposition from government officials, health workers and rights activists.

Papua’s parliament agreed Tuesday to drop a section of the health development bill that supported the tagging of some HIV patients with small computer chips inserted beneath the skin — part of extreme efforts to monitor the disease, lawmaker Weinard Watori said.

The provincial parliament will wrap up discussions on other issues in the bill, including measures to fight the spread of HIV, by the end of the week, Watori said.

Indonesia is the world’s fourth most populous country and has one of Asia’s fastest growing HIV rates, with up to 290,000 infections out of 235 million people, fueled mainly by intravenous drug users and prostitution.

But Papua, the country’s easternmost and poorest province with a population of about 2 million, has been hardest hit. Its case rate of almost 61 per 100,000 is 15 times the national average, according to internationally funded research, which blames lack of knowledge about sexually transmitted diseases.

Local health workers and AIDS activists had called the tagging plan “abhorrent” and argued the best way to tackle Papua’s epidemic was through increased spending on sexual education and condom use.

“It’s a violation of human rights,” Papua’s Deputy Governor Alex Hasegem said of the proposal.

French scientist who shared this year’s Nobel prize for medicine said on Saturday he believed the transmission of AIDS could be eliminated within years.

Luc Montagnier, director of the World Foundation for AIDS Research and Prevention, told a news conference together with this year’s other winners for medicine that halting the transmission of AIDS would make it a disease much like others.

“Our job, of course, is to find complementary treatment to eradicate the infection. I think it’s not impossible to do it within a few years,” Montagnier said.

“So I hope to see in my lifetime the eradication of, not the AIDS epidemic, but at least the infection,” the 76-year-old said. “This could be achieved.”

Montagnier and Francoise Barre-Sinoussi, of the Institut Pasteur, shared half of the 2008 prize for discovering the virus that has killed 25 million people since the early 1980s.

There is no cure for AIDS, which infects an estimated 33 million globally, but cocktails of drugs can control the virus and keep patients healthy.

There is no vaccine either, although researchers are trying to find vaccines that either prevent infection or would control the virus so that patients are less likely to transmit it — a so-called therapeutic vaccine.

Montagnier said he hoped such a therapeutic vaccine could be developed within about four to five years, noting he and colleagues had already been working on this for a decade.
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President says program has treated 2 million in disease-ravaged Africa

President Bush says his presidential initiative has already met its goal of treating two million people with the deadly AIDS disease in sub-Saharan Africa.

The White House said on World Aids Day that when the administration launched the President’s Emergency Plan For AIDS Relief in 2003, the goal was to support two million people with lifesaving anti-retroviral treatment in five years.

Standing with first lady Laura Bush on the North Lawn near a giant red ribbon to mark the occasion, Bush said the goal has been exceeded — and ahead of schedule. Bush said the program — known as PEPFAR — is providing “hope and healing” to people around the world.

What is World Aids Day? World AIDS Day is an opportunity to be inspired to respect and protect the health and wellbeing of ourselves and those around us through knowledge, action and consideration.

This World AIDS Day website is developed and managed by NAT.

About the National AIDS TrustNAT is the UK’s leading charity dedicated to transforming society’s response to HIV. We provide fresh thinking, expert advice and practical resources. We campaign for change.

Shaping attitudes. Challenging injustice. Changing lives.

Our vision is world in which people living with HIV are treated as equal citizens with respect, dignity and justice, are diagnosed early and receive the highest standards of care, and in which everyone knows how and is able to protect themselves from HIV infection.

Lawmakers in Indonesia’s remote province of Papua have thrown their support behind a controversial bill requiring some HIV/AIDS patients to be implanted with microchips — part of extreme efforts to monitor the disease.

Health workers and rights activists sharply criticized the plan Monday.

But legislator John Manangsang said by implanting small computer chips beneath the skin of “sexually aggressive” patients, authorities would be in a better position to identify, track and ultimately punish those who deliberately infect others with up to six months in jail or a $5,000 fine.

The technical and practical details still need to be hammered out, but the proposed legislation has received full backing from the provincial parliament and, if it gets a majority vote as expected, will be enacted next month, he and others said.

Indonesia is the world’s fourth most populous country and has one of Asia’s fastest growing HIV rates, with up to 290,000 infections out of 235 million people, fueled mainly by intravenous drug users and prostitution.

But Papua, the country’s easternmost and poorest province with a population of about 2 million, has been hardest hit. Its case rate of almost 61 per 100,000 is 15 times the national average, according to internationally funded research, which blames lack of knowledge about sexually transmitted diseases.

“The health situation is extraordinary, so we have to take extraordinary action,” said another lawmaker, Weynand Watari, who envisions radio frequency identification tags like those used to track everything from cattle to luggage.

A committee would be created to decide who should be fitted with chips and to monitor patients’ behavior, but it remains unclear who would be on it and how they would carry out their work, lawmakers said Monday.

Since the plan was initially proposed, the government has narrowed its scope, saying the chips would only be implanted in those who are “sexually aggressive,” but it has not said how it would determine who fits that group. It also was not clear how many people it might include.

Nancy Fee, the UNAIDS country coordinator, said the global body was not aware of any laws or initiatives elsewhere involving HIV/AIDS patients and microchips.

Scientists have engineered an immune cell that can find and attack HIV, even when it mutates.

Courtesy Lindsey Chapman: Scientists from the United States and Britain have genetically engineered a human immune cell to attack HIV (human immunodeficiency virus), even when it mutates to disguise itself.

Not only can “killer T-cells” determine when other cells had been infected with HIV, but they also slowed the spread of HIV in a lab dish, according to Reuters.

HIV is a tricky virus because it can disguise itself to hide from immune cells. Scientists reported, however, that it took fewer engineered T-cells a shorter amount of time to find and control HIV than a natural T-cell.

“In the face of our engineered assassin cells, the virus will either die or be forced to change its disguises again, weakening itself along the way,” Andy Sewell of Britain’s Cardiff University told The BBC. “We’d prefer the first option but I suspect we’ll see the latter. Even if we do only cripple the virus, this will still be a good outcome, as it is likely to become a much slower target and be easier to pick off.”

T-cell treatment testing in HIV patients could start as early as next year.

Earlier this year, scientists published information about whether it is possible to make people immune to HIV through new gene-editing techniques.

CCR5 is a protein on the surface of T-cells that the HIV uses to pull itself inside a human cell. A research team from the University of Pennsylvania announced that it had developed a method to clip the protein out of some T-cells. The method was tested on mice, not humans, “so it should be a source of guarded optimism, because it’s not certain the technique would work in humans,” Wired reported.

Canadian accused of transmitting disease to women; 2 die from virus

A Canadian court started proceedings Monday in the country’s first-ever first-degree murder trial involving the alleged sexual transmission of the HIV virus.

Lawyers told the court that Johnson Aziga, 52, first learned he was HIV positive in 1997, but continued to have unprotected sex without disclosing his condition to his partners. HIV, or human immunodeficiency virus, can cause AIDS, and the associated immune system failure can make victims susceptible to infections and other diseases.

Aziga faces two counts of first-degree murder because two of his girlfriends died of what lawyers said were HIV-related cancers.

“One may immediately think of a violent rape scenario,” prosecutor Tim Power told the three-woman, nine-man jury. “That is not what this case is all about.”

Rather, Power said in his opening statement, Aziga put his partners at risk of serious bodily harm without their knowing, even having sex with one woman on the morning of his arrest in August 2003.

Johnson was also accused of having unprotected sex with at least 11 women without disclosing his HIV-positive health status.

While there have been several criminal prosecutions in Canada and the U.S. related to the willful spread of HIV, this is the first time someone has been charged with lethally infecting partners, according to the defense lawyers.

“It’s going to be a landmark case,” Aziga’s lawyer, Davies Bagambiire, said. “This is the first time that a Canadian is prosecuted for alleged murder through the alleged dissemination or transmission of the HIV virus.”

Power told the court that evidence will show Aziga, an immigrant from Uganda, had several counseling sessions on the risks of transmission and two public health orders that he inform partners about his status and use condoms during sex, but he did not do so.

In addition, when some of the women asked him directly — including one who initially used condoms with him — if he had the human immunodeficiency virus, he said “no.”

So, be careful when meeting someone and always think someone is positive before having sex! It pays to be careful.

A team of researchers from the University of Rochester Medical Centre and Princeton University has discovered that existing anti-obesity drugs can be used to treat infections like flu, hepatitis or HIV.

Metabolism refers to a process by which living things break down nutrients to produce energy. For instance, the breakdown glucose and its conversation via chain reactions into adenosine triphosphate, the energy-storing currency of cellular life.

Glucose can also be converted into fatty acids - the lipid building blocks of human hormones and cell membranes - that are used by influenza, HIV and hepatitis viruses to build their viral cover and hijack human cells.

During the study, the researchers developed a new technique to analyse the mechanisms regarding how such viruses penetrate the metabolic building blocks from their cellular hosts.

They also studied the fluxes or concentration and turnover, of interchangeable molecules within the metabolic reactions that convert sugars into fatty acids.

“Using new fluxomic techniques, our study reveals that viral infection takes control of cellular metabolism and drives, among other things, marked increases in fatty acid synthesis,” Nature magazine quoted Dr. Joshua Munger, assistant professor of Biochemistry and Biophysics at the University of Rochester Medical Centre, and a study author, as saying.

“We also found that if you target these increases in fatty acid metabolism using existing anti-obesity and anti-metabolism drugs, you inhibit viral replication,” Munger added.

The new technique enabled the researchers to measure the changes in metabolic flux in human cells as they became infected by human cytomegalovirus (HCMV), an enveloped virus of the b-herpes family that infects most human adults and that causes severe disease in those with weakened immune systems.

The team used drugs known to inhibit enzymes that build fatty acids, acetyl-CoA carboxylase (ACC) and fatty acid synthase (FAS), used in the treatment of obesity and high cholesterol, to determine whether HCMV-induced fatty acid production was necessary for enveloped viruses to make copies of themselves.

They found that treatment with TOFA, an ACC inhibitor, led to a more than thousand-fold reduction in HCMV replication, while C75, an inhibitor of FAS, resulted in a more than 100-fold reduction.