God, AIDS, Africa & HOPE

Reflections / Gedanken

07/14/2010 • 10:30 pm Comments Off on 14.07.2010 Back to normal..

14.07.2010 Back to normal..

Besides office work today meeting with Clemens and Marion about their sports project, which they have had introduced to the TUM Munich. A brief discussion about how to develop and further this project.

At the end of the brief meeting someone used the opportunity to break in my car and take out a couple of things – and I am left with a broken window, lots of glass all over the show and spent the afternoon with police and other entities to get my case number and almost (yes almost) a new glass – but it did not fit.. So I have to wait whether tomorrow is my lucky glass day and by the way: plastic makes a meaningful glass substitute as I can hear now by the noise level how fast I am driving.  As I was busy with the aftermath almost all other appointments re-scheduled. Welcome back to the normality of South African life.

Filed under: Reflection, Uncategorized, , , ,

07/14/2010 • 3:00 pm Comments Off on HIV figures around the world

HIV figures around the world

A major international conference on AIDS starts in Vienna on July 18, when thousands of scientists, health workers, activists, and government officials will gather to discuss the latest advances against the disease.

An estimated 33.4 million people worldwide are infected with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) that causes AIDS, according to figures issued by the Joint UN Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS).

Here are some AIDS figures from around the world:

THE GLOBAL PICTURE:

* Global deaths from AIDS reached an estimated 2 million in 2008, the same number as in 2007. Since the AIDS pandemic started in the early 1980s, almost 60 million people have been infected with the virus and 25 million have died of HIV-related causes.

* In 2008, around 430,000 children were born with HIV, bringing to 2.1 million the total number of children under 15 living with HIV. Young people account for around 40 percent of all new adult (those aged 15 and over) HIV infections worldwide.

* The annual number of new HIV infections remained the same in 2008 as for 2007 at 2.7 million. This is down from 3.0 million in 2001.

* Although 33.4 million people had the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) in 2008, more of them are living with HIV than ever before, at least in part due to the beneficial effects of AIDS drugs known as antiretroviral therapy. There are currently 26.3 million adults over 25 living with HIV.

AFRICA & ASIA:

* Sub-Saharan Africa remains the region most heavily affected by HIV, accounting for 67 percent of all people living with the virus worldwide, 71 percent of AIDS-related deaths and 91 percent of all new infections among children.

* An estimated 1.9 million people were newly infected with HIV in sub-Saharan Africa in 2008, bringing to 22.4 million the number of Africans living with HIV.

* The nine countries in southern Africa continue to bear a disproportionate share of the global AIDS burden. Each of them has an adult HIV rate of more than 10 percent.

* With an adult HIV prevalence of 26 percent in 2007, Swaziland has the most severe level of infection in the world. Lesotho’s epidemic seems to have stabilised, with an adult HIV rate of 23.2 percent in 2008.

* South Africa continues to be home to the world’s largest population of people living with HIV — 5.7 million in 2007. More than 250,000 South Africans died of AIDS-related diseases in 2008 and almost 2 million children there have lost one or both parents to the epidemic.

* Asia, home to 60 percent of the world’s population, is second only to sub-Saharan Africa in terms of people living with HIV. An estimated 4.7 million people were living with HIV in Asia in 2008.

* India accounts for roughly half of Asia’s HIV cases. With the exception of Thailand, where HIV affects 1.4 percent of adults, every country in Asia has an adult HIV infection rate of less than 1 percent.

OTHER REGIONS:

* Rates of HIV in eastern Europe and Central Asia are on the rise, with severe and growing epidemics in the Ukraine and Russia. With an adult HIV prevalence of 1.6 percent in 2007, Ukraine has the highest prevalence in all of Europe. In eastern Europe 1.5 million people were living with HIV.

* In Latin America, new HIV infections totalled an estimated 170,000 in 2008 bringing to 2 million the number of people living with HIV there. An estimated 77,000 people died of AIDS-related illnesses there last year.

* There were 2.3 million people living with HIV in 2008 in North America and western and central Europe.

Sources: Reuters/UNAIDS
yahoo news: http://uk.news.yahoo.com/22/20100713/tsc-uk-aids-figures-factbox-011ccfa.html

Filed under: HIV and AIDS, HIV Prevention, HIV Treatment, Medical and Research, Politics and Society, , , , , , , , ,

07/11/2010 • 12:29 pm Comments Off on POZ: Newly Discovered Antibody Kills Up to 91 Percent of HIV Strains

POZ: Newly Discovered Antibody Kills Up to 91 Percent of HIV Strains

U.S. government scientists have discovered three potent new antibodies, one of which can neutralize up to 91 percent of all HIV strains. These discoveries were published online July 8 in Science and were reported by The Wall Street Journal. Though the scientists acknowledge that their findings represent a hopeful step forward, they caution that it will take a lot of time and effort before they can be translated into something that will prevent or treat HIV infection.

Antibodies are a key element in the immune system that our body uses to defend itself from bacteria and viruses. Antibodies kill these microbes directly or flag the foreign invaders for destruction by other immune cells. Unfortunately, HIV’s outer surface is so easily changeable that antibodies—most of which can neutralize only a few strains—fail to keep it in check. This has made designing a vaccine, which works by provoking the body to produce antibodies, such a frustrating endeavor.

Following a string of failures in vaccine science, researchers have turned in recent years to a search for broadly neutralizing antibodies, which can kill multiple strains of HIV. Several have been identified, but none have been able to neutralize more than 40 percent of HIV strains, and all were quite difficult for the body to produce naturally.

The Wall Street Journal reports that, “The [new] antibodies were discovered in the cells of a 60-year-old African-American gay man, known in the scientific literature as Donor 45, whose body made the antibodies naturally. Researchers screened 25 million of his cells to find 12 that produced the antibodies.”

It’s not yet clear whether or how these new antibodies can be used to prevent and treat HIV. Researchers will focus on several possibilities. One approach entails giving the antibodies directly to people, specifically in cases to prevent transmission from mothers to their babies. Other approaches range from building traditional vaccines with the antibodies, to the developing gene therapies.
Whichever strategy is most promising, it will likely take some time before it is available. Gary Nabel, MD, PhD—one of the leaders of the studies and a director of the Vaccine Research Center at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in Bethesda, Maryland—told the Journal, “We’re going to be at this for a while” before any benefit is seen in the clinic.

Source: http://www.poz.com/rssredir/articles/HIV_neutralizing_antibody_761_18701.shtml

Filed under: HIV and AIDS, HIV Prevention, HIV Treatment, Medical and Research, , ,

07/09/2010 • 3:43 pm Comments Off on PlusNews Africa: Money no protection from HIV

PlusNews Africa: Money no protection from HIV

JOHANNESBURG, 6 July 2010 (PlusNews) – A new study has challenged widely held assumptions about income level in relation to HIV, finding that neither wealth nor poverty are reliable predictors of HIV infection in Africa.
Previously, the argument that poverty drove HIV epidemics was supported by the World Bank and UNAIDS, as well as less reliable authorities like former South African President Thabo Mbeki, who told the International AIDS Conference in Durban in 2000 that the disease was a partner with “poverty, suffering, social disadvantage and inequity”.
More recent research suggests that the reality is far more complex. For example, Botswana and South Africa, described as two of the wealthiest countries on the continent, also have among the highest rates of HIV infection.
Nevertheless, the idea that poverty fuels the spread of HIV has persisted as “a very dominant narrative”, according to Justin Parkhurst of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
Parkhurst analyzed and compared data on HIV and wealth from demographic and health surveys in 12 sub-Saharan African countries with generalized epidemics (national prevalence rates higher than 1 percent); his findings are published in the July issue of the Bulletin of the World Health Organization.

He noted that in lower-income countries HIV prevalence tended to rise in tandem with wealth – in Uganda and Cote d’Ivoire, for example, women in the highest income bracket had the highest HIV prevalence.
In countries with a per capita gross domestic product higher than US$2,000, the link between wealth and prevalence was less clear.
Parkhurst also found that the relationship between wealth and HIV changed over time. A survey was conducted In Tanzania in 2003, and another in 2008; in the intervening five-year period, HIV prevalence declined among women in higher income brackets and rose among those in the lower income groups. Among men, prevalence stayed the same in the poorest group but was lower in all other groups, with the biggest declines in the highest income groups.
“HIV spreads through sexual behaviours, and these are social behaviours that change over time and are responsive to outside influences,” Parkhurst told IRIN/PlusNews. He compared the way HIV affected different social groups with the way tobacco use and obesity once affected mainly the rich, but were now bigger problems among the poor.

Wealthier people were often harder hit early in an HIV epidemic, probably because of their broader social and sexual networks. “Over time, the wealthy tend to be more educated [about HIV risk] and more likely to think about their future health,” said Parkhurst.
However, these trends are by no means universal and the patterns for men and women differ. In Swaziland, for example, which has the highest HIV prevalence of all the countries Parkhurst looked at, there was little evidence of a link between household wealth and individual prevalence.
Know your epidemic
Parkhurst’s findings have implications for one-size-fits-all prevention campaigns that do not take into account the complex and changing ways in which wealth, education level and gender can affect risk-taking behaviours.

“We need to educate people [about HIV] in a way that’s relevant to their context,” he said. “It’s about letting local actors to find out what’s going to work best. If we try to work out the solution from London … it’s unlikely to work.”

Parkhurst said “bottom-up” HIV prevention initiatives targeting the specific lifestyles and risk behaviours of a community were more likely to work. This approach is already catching on, with UNAIDS urging countries to “know your epidemic” and design prevention programmes accordingly.
“Health practitioners know they have to diagnose a problem before they can treat it,” he said. “I think the international community is starting to recognize the importance of addressing structural drivers of HIV, not just broadly, but to look at the specifics for specific communities.”

Source: http://www.plusnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=89746

Filed under: HIV and AIDS, HIV Prevention, Politics and Society, Society and living environment, , , ,

07/08/2010 • 3:38 pm Comments Off on POZ: HIV Stem Cell Therapy in Mice Is Successful

POZ: HIV Stem Cell Therapy in Mice Is Successful

Source: http://www.poz.com/rssredir/articles/hiv_zincfinger_sangamo_761_18693.shtml

Researchers are reporting that a new method for altering the genes of immune cells to make them resistant to HIV infection was a success in mice. The study was published online on July 2 in the journal Nature Biotechnology.
The new type of therapy, which treats stem cells with engineered zinc-finger nucleases, is designed to help the body grow new CD4 cells that don’t carry one of the key coreceptors—CCR5—that HIV requires to enter and infect a cell. In this experiment, Nathalia Holt, PhD, from the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California at Los Angeles, and her colleagues compared two groups of mice that are bred to have a human immune system. The first group was given untreated stem cells. The second group received a batch of zinc-finger-treated cells.
Holt’s team found that the treated stem cells multiplied rapidly in the mice and were highly resistant to HIV infection. By comparison, the untreated cells did not spawn HIV-resistant cells, and the mice who receive the untreated cells experienced HIV-related CD4 cell losses, indicative of disease progression.
Sangamo BioSciences is developing this therapy, and small exploratory studies of zinc-finger therapy are already taking place in humans.

Filed under: HIV and AIDS, Medical and Research, , , , ,

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