Using ingenious molecular espionage, scientists have found how a single key enzyme, seemingly the Swiss army knife in HIV's toolbox, differentiates and dynamically binds both DNA and RNA as part of the virus' fierce attack on host cells. The work is described this week in the journal Nature.

As HIV disease progresses in a person infected with the HIV virus, a group of cells in the immune system, the CD8+ T lymphocytes, become “exhausted,” losing many of their abilities to kill other cells infected by the virus. For many years scientists have debated whether this exhaustion of CD8+ T cells is the cause, or the consequence, of persistence of the HIV virus. In a study published this week in PLoS Medicine, Marcus Altfeld and colleagues studied the immune response over time amongst 18 individuals who had very recently become infected with HIV.

Social factors, including economic pressures caused by climate change, could lead to an increase in HIV infection rates world-wide, warns a leading researcher from the University of New South Wales (UNSW).

A research group supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has uncovered a new route for attacking the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) that may offer a way to circumvent problems with drug resistance. In findings published today in the online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers report that they have blocked HIV infection in the test tube by inactivating a human protein expressed in key immune cells.

Two global research organizations dedicated to designing a vaccine against HIV – the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI), and the Center for HIV/AIDS Vaccine Immunology (CHAVI) – have signed an agreement to work together to address major biological questions that have slowed development of a safe, effective and affordable AIDS vaccine.

A phase 1 clinical trial to test a novel HIV/AIDS vaccine has begun at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH). This new vaccine aims to overcome the problem of preexisting immunity to common vaccine vectors, which is thought to be a major problem in the developing world.

An increase in the CD163+/CD16+ monocyte subset could be a biomarker for the progression of HIV disease, according to researchers at Temple University.

More that 1.2 million deaths could be prevented in South Africa over the next five years by accelerating efforts to provide access to antiretroviral therapy (ART), according to a study released online today by the Journal of Infectious Diseases. Using a sophisticated mathematical model of HIV disease and treatment, a team of researchers led by Rochelle Walensky, MD, MPH of Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) estimated the number of AIDS-related deaths in South Africa through 2012 under alternative ART scale-up assumptions.

The advent of effective medications for treating HIV dramatically improved the outlook for both adults and children infected with HIV who had access to treatment, but the optimal timing for starting treatment remains controversial, particularly in children. A debate article in this week's PLoS Medicine lays out the case for deferred treatment against the case for early initiation of treatment in children infected with HIV.

Nearly half of all HIV-positive African adults who become infected with Salmonella die from what otherwise would be a seven-day bout of diarrhea. Now, UC Davis School of Medicine scientists have discovered how salmonella becomes lethal for AIDS patients. Their findings also implicate a mechanism by which HIV evades the powerful drugs used to treat AIDS.

Determining how the HIV/AIDS epidemic increases food insecurity in African cities – and what can be done to reduce the chances of this happening –is the focus of a new, international Queen’s-led project.

Scientists have known for more than a decade that a protein associated with the HIV virus is good at crossing cell membranes, but they didn’t know how it worked. A multidisciplinary team from the University of Illinois has solved the mystery, and their findings could improve the design of therapeutic agents that cross a variety of membrane types.

By outfitting immune-system killer cells with a new pair of genes, scientists at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University transformed them into potent weapons that destroy cells infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. Their novel strategy of genetically engineering immune cells to redirect their infection-fighting ability toward killing HIV-infected cells could lead to an entirely new approach for combating AIDS and other viral diseases. The findings appear in the March issue of the Journal of Virology.

Impaired brain function is a prominent and still unsolved problem in AIDS . Shortly after an individual becomes infected with HIV, the virus can invade the brain and persist in this organ for life. Many HIV-infected individuals experience disturbances in memory functions and movement, which can progress to serious dementia. How the virus causes brain disease is still unclear.

A Canada-U.S. research team has solved a major genetic mystery: How a protein in some people’s DNA guards them against killer immune diseases such as HIV. In an advance online edition of Nature Medicine, the scientists explain how the protein, FOX03a, shields against viral attacks and how the discovery will help in the development of a HIV vaccine.

Researchers at The Scripps Research Institute have developed a new two-punch strategy against HIV and they have already successfully tested aspects of it in the laboratory.

An experimental anti-HIV gel is safe for women to use on a daily basis, according to researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) and the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.

The doctor who wouldn’t come into the patient’s hospital room. The neurologist who avoided eye contact. The ambulance attendant who angrily threw her bloodied gloves into the street after learning the injured patient was HIV-positive.

Even with effective anti-HIV therapies, doctors still have not been able to eradicate the virus from infected individuals who are receiving such treatments, largely because of the persistence of HIV in hideouts known as viral reservoirs. One important reservoir is the gut, where HIV causes much of its damage due to the large number of HIV target cells that reside there. These cells, known as CD4+ T cells, are largely contained in lymph nodes and patches of lymphocytes that collectively are called gut-associated lymphoid tissue, or GALT.

A cellular protein that helps guide immune cells to the gut has been newly identified as a target of HIV when the virus begins its assault on the body's immune system, according to researchers from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

A study to assess the adverse effects of anti-retroviral drugs shows that two widely-used HIV drugs are associated with an increased risk of heart attack/the formation of blood clots in the heart. With the use of Didanosine, the risk of developing a heart attack increases by 49%, with Abacavir; the increased risk is 90%. The effect is most pronounced in patients with a high underlying cardiovascular risk. The research findings also show that the adverse effect is reversible, if patients discontinue use of these particular drugs.

Beneficial bacteria found in healthy women help to reduce the amount of vaginal HIV among HIV-infected women and might make it more difficult for the virus to spread, boosting the possibility that “good bacteria” might someday be tapped in the fight against HIV.

The President’s proposed budget for fiscal year 2009, if enacted, would spell disaster for the nation’s health, and by extension, our national effort to respond to the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the United States.

A drug already used to treat parasitic infections, and once looked at for cancer, also attacks the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) in a new and powerful way, according to research published today online in the open access journal Retrovirology.

The combined supercomputing power of the UK and US ‘national grids’ has enabled UCL (University College London) scientists to simulate the efficacy of an HIV drug in blocking a key protein used by the lethal virus. The method – an early example of the Virtual Physiological Human in action – could one day be used to tailor personal drug treatments, for example for HIV patients developing resistance to their drugs.

A group of Australian researchers at the Universities of Melbourne and New South Wales have developed new tools and paradigms to understand immune evasion from HIV. The study, published Friday, January 25 in PLoS Pathogens, shows that both prior vaccination and timing influence the rates of immune escape, providing further insight into the effectiveness of T cell immunity to HIV.

Special HIV peptide interacts with a cell membrane to open a hole in the cell, offering scientists a new pathway for delivering materials to a cell. Two theoretical physicists at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have uncovered what they believe is the long-sought-after pathway that an HIV peptide takes to enter healthy cells. The theorists analyzed two years of biocomputation and simulation to uncover a surprisingly simple mechanism describing how this protein fragment penetrates the cell membrane. The discovery could help scientists treat other human illnesses by exploiting the same molecules that make HIV so deadly proficient.

Prescription drugs now used to treat human immunodeficiency virus infection in adults may prevent the vaginal transmission of HIV, researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center have found.

UCLA researchers have found that a key protein in the body's dendritic cells can stop the virus that causes AIDS from "budding" — part of the virus' life cycle that is crucial to its ability to replicate and infect other cells.

New structural details illustrate how a promising class of antibodies may block human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-1 infection and reveal valuable clues for design of an effective HIV-1 vaccine. The findings, published by Cell Press in the January issue of Immunity, are particularly significant as antibody induction appears to be a key and necessary component of an effective HIV vaccine, evidenced by the recent failure of vaccines that stimulated only the T cell arm of the immune system to protect humans from contracting HIV-1.