Nature Newsblog
As the AIDS conference closes in Mexico City today, we're looking forward to the next one in Vienna in 2010 - and the shifts in the AIDS world that will hapen in the two years leading up to it.
Continue reading "International AIDS Meeting: Onward toward Vienna" »
Prevention is a huge theme of this AIDS conference, as it was in Toronto. Today, scientists addressed one of the uncertainties that might sandbag a promising prevention strategy.
Continue reading "International AIDS Conference: Reality check for drug prevention strategies" »
Decades after AIDS first appeared, doctors are still hoping for a cure.
Continue reading "International AIDS Conference: Still hoping for a cure" »
Assumptions can be dangerous, particularly when it comes to disease. And so it’s important to note that at the AIDS 2008 conference experts have challenged numerous preconceptions about HIV transmission.
One example of this involves risks relating to heterosexual sex. It’s no secret that having unsafe sex is similar to engaging in a round of Russian roulette. Scientists have often cited the estimate that one encounter of unprotected heterosexual intercourse with an infected individual carries a 1 in 500 to 1 in 1,000 chance of HIV transmission. But results presented here in Mexico City suggest that in certain circumstances the risk is much, much higher than that.
Myron Cohen of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill spoke here yesterday about data from a recent systematic review he helped conduct that suggests the story is far more complex. One study he and his colleagues looked at reported a rate of HIV transmission of once out of every 3.1 acts of heterosexual anal intercourse. They also found the rate was higher in cases where a partner had genital ulcers, for example, which facilitate the spread of virus.
So while the 1 in 1,000 figure might apply to some heterosexual encounters, it certainly does not apply to all of them.
In recent weeks we’ve heard announcements about increases in funding towards the treatment HIV/AIDS. At the G8 summit in Hokkaido, Japan last month, world leaders set the target of spending $60 billion over the next five years towards tackling a handful of diseases, including HIV/AIDS. And just last week US President George W. Bush reauthorized an augmented version of the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), which will is slated to supply $48 billion through 2013 to help fight AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria in regions such as sub-Saharan Africa.
But with increased spending comes increased scrutiny of returns on investment—and that’s very much a topic of discussion here at the AIDS 2008 meeting.
Posted on behalf of Roxanne Khamsi, News editor of Nature Medicine
Heavy rain and traffic could not keep thousands of people from attending the opening session of the AIDS 2008 meeting here in Mexico City last night. There, in the massive auditorium, we heard rallying cries against HIV/AIDS from global leaders, including Ban Ki-moon, UN secretary general; Margaret Chan, director general of the World Health Organization (WHO); and Felipe Calderon Hinojosa, president of Mexico. The speakers remained on message, echoing the theme of this year’s conference: a call for broader and more comprehensive treatments and prevention measures under the headline ‘Universal Action Now’.
The crowd was generally responsive to each of the talks; but they saved most of their enthusiasm for one of the lesser-known presenters.
Is the UN Joint Programme on AIDS (UNAIDS) retreating from a global commitment to provide HIV prevention, treatment and care to everyone who needs it by 2010?
Continue reading "International AIDS Conference: Lewis to UNAIDS: No Retreat" »
Simple strategy may give tired T cells a boost.
Why does the human body fail to defend itself from the virus that causes AIDS? The answer, researchers are finding, could be that HIV triggers a natural mechanism that impairs the main cells responsible for fighting the virus.
Read the story here.
Early success in AIDS prevention may have been overturned.
Hard-earned gains in the fight against AIDS may be eroding in Uganda, according to data presented Thursday at the XVI International AIDS Conference in Toronto, Canada.
Read the story here.
The United States gives more to global AIDS prevention programmes than any other country. But its flagship programme is controversial; some say it pushes abstinence too heavily. Erika Check sat down with Mark Dybul, US Global AIDS Coordinator, at the international AIDS meeting in Toronto this week, to discuss US strategy.
Read the interview here.
"Stop homosexuals, or they’ll infect us all,” screamed the headline of an opinion piece by a Baptist minister, Greg Dixon, in USA Today on June 22, 1983. Americans must “smash the homosexual movement” or it would destroy American civilization, Dixon maintained. His plea wasn’t logical, but it did reflect the fear and hatred felt by many people.
Continue reading "AIDS: Us vs. Them: The return of Michael Fumento" »
Erika, I’ve been fulminating all week about how AIDS differs from other medical conditions. Well, here’s one way in which they are the same: drug therapy is the cornerstone of treatment.
At the 1996 Vancouver conference, articles in the first issue of the conference newspaper noted that three-drug combinations reduced viral load and death of HIV-infected patients. These combinations included two types of drugs: protease inhibitors (PIs) and reverse transcriptase inhibitors. Combining the two types of drugs changed HIV from a death sentence to a chronic disease, and opened up a tantalizing possibility: “Can combination therapies eradicate HIV?” the conference newspaper asked.
When I covered my last AIDS conference, in Geneva in 1998, already most of the cases of HIV infection around the world were in Africa and it was clear that AIDS would devastate that continent. Also unanimous, in my perception, was a sense of helplessness about doing anything to stop that ongoing disaster.
That has all changed. This week I covered sessions about provision of antiretroviral therapy (ART) to adults and children in many African countries as well as programs to prevent mother-to-child transmission. One million people are now in treatment in Africa.
Study shows life-saving potential of dual treatment.
A huge and growing tuberculosis (TB) epidemic threatens to crush the world's efforts to fight AIDS, health officials, scientists and activists warned at the XVI International AIDS Conference in Toronto, Canada, this Wednesday.
Read the story here.
I can't give my dad the last word on a vaccine!
Bill Clinton joins the opposition to the United States' stance on AIDS education.
Former US president Bill Clinton became the most prominent leader yet to criticize US AIDS policy at the XVI International AIDS Conference in Toronto, Canada, yesterday.
Read the story here.
Erika, you are so inefficient. You had to interview two people to get pro and con views on the likelihood of an HIV vaccine. I got both sides from one person, Dr. Peggy Johnston, Director of the Vaccine and Prevention Research Program at NIAID. I asked her whether it was possible that we might never have a vaccine. “Yes, that’s possible,” she said. But she was also optimistic that the vaccine campaign would succeed.
Political leaders rarely get warm fuzzies at these AIDS conferences. But this afternoon, a crowd of hundreds of activists and scientists melted like teenage girls at the sight of former U.S. President Bill Clinton. Prompted by conference co-chair Helene Gayle, the crowd serenaded Clinton, singing “Happy Birthday” to him after he delivered a wide-ranging speech on issues related to HIV and AIDS. Clinton turns 60 on Saturday.
Since my dad covered his first AIDS conference in 1992, a lot has changed. But one thing hasn’t: we still don’t have a vaccine to prevent AIDS.
This is one of the saddest ongoing failures of science. Foundations, governments and a handful of companies have spent billions of dollars over the past 20 years trying to develop a vaccine to protect people from AIDS. But now, you hear scientists openly admitting that we may never reach this goal.
Drug trade from Afghanistan is spreading HIV.
The flourishing drug trade in Afghanistan is fuelling the AIDS epidemic in that country and its neighbours in Asia, warns a World Bank report released at the International AIDS Conference in Toronto, Canada, this week.
Read the story here.
Drug trade from Afghanistan is spreading HIV.
The flourishing drug trade in Afghanistan is fuelling the AIDS epidemic in that country and its neighbours in Asia, warns a World Bank report released at the International AIDS Conference in Toronto, Canada, this week.
Read the story here.
You can identify the people from the Black AIDS Institute in Los Angeles by their black t-shirts. On the front: “Got AIDS”? On the back: “How do you know?” It’s part of their campaign to get all black Americans tested. Also encountered in the halls of the conference center: a clutch of men and women in indigenous African garb, two Vietnamese men in the saffron robes of Buddhist monks, several women from India in brightly patterned saris, and two men excellently dressed as women.
Those interested in the International AIDS conference may also be interested in a news feature by Erika Check, in Nature this week:
AIDS treatment: Staying the course
Some feared that widespread use of AIDS treatments in Africa would encourage drug resistance, with globally disastrous consequences. But there's no crisis yet, reports Erika Check.
Read the feature here (you will need a password).
For those following the International AIDS conference this week, you may be interested in this story in Nature's news section:
AIDS vaccine research becomes 'big science'
But 'mission-oriented' approach has its critics.
With no vaccine to show for more than 20 years of work, the HIV-vaccine community is being forced to radically change the way it works. Funding organizations are insisting on a 'big science' approach involving huge data-sharing collaborations. But AIDS researchers are divided over whether such a strategy will really speed progress towards a vaccine.
Read the story here. (you will need a password)
This afternoon, as I was walking through an area of community organizations dubbed "The Global Village", a young Thai man handed me a booklet of Asian Programme Activities – including such titles as “Sex, Drugs and ARVs Behind Prison Bars” -- along with a small bag that proved to contain 2 condoms – one lubricated, the other not.
Continue reading "AIDS: How is this meeting different from all other meetings?" »
The father-and-daughter team of William and Erika Check will be blogging from the XVI International AIDS Conference here from 13-18 August. Check back for updates.
William Check is also writing for the AIDS conference newspaper, The Daily Voice, this week. But his views expressed here are entirely personal; he is not a spokesperson for the conference.
Erika Check is Nature's Biomedical Correspondent, and is usually based in San Francisco.
