HIV-1
sa smith | March 27, 2014You all might have heard about 'delta32' or 'delta-CCR5' people in association with HIV infection.
People who naturally, by chance, have deletions and mutations in the CCR5 gene of their DNA dont make functional CCR5 proteins. It doesnt appear to be 'a big deal', and people who have this particular mutation seem to live normal lives. But the absence of the CCR5 protein means that in these people, HIV does not have one of its favorite co-receptors (note: there are others! CCR5 is just HIVs favorite!). Thus people with this phenotype are resistant to HIV infection.
That is SUPER for them... but…
sa smith | March 18, 2014Fun! I like this new idea!
Targeted Cytotoxic Therapy Kills Persisting HIV Infected Cells During ART
I havent talked about 'scFv' on ERV yet, but theyre very handy tools scientists are taking advantage of more and more these days.
'scFv's are single-chain variable fragments... not an overly useful name, but what they are are basically the recognition domain of an antibody. Normally the recognition portion of an antibody (what says 'stick to HIV!' or 'stick to influenza!') is made up of the variable regions of two parts of the antibody-- the Heavy and Light chain.
An scFv turns that…
sa smith | March 12, 2014More HIV news!
HIVs ancestor, SIV (simian immunodeficiency virus), has been around a LOT longer than we previously thought.
As I have mentioned before, we always assumed retroviruses like HIV, lentiviruses, are evolutionarily 'young'. They are relatively complex, so probably 'newish' in retrovirus-world, but they do not fossilize well (we have found very few lentiviral ERVs), so it has been hard to elucidate HIVs ancient genealogy.
Several years ago, researchers used an isolated colony of primates to estimate SIVs age at 32,821-132,780 years old.
Well, HIVs ancestors just got older... er!…
sa smith | March 10, 2014Holy crap the HIV news last week!
So much HIV news!
First on the list:
Early Treatment Is Found to Clear H.I.V. in a 2nd Baby
Just in case you have forgotten, the first baby.
What happened to ‘the baby cured of HIV’?
Now, the second baby-- I must emphasize that I only know what has been reported to pop media. There is no publication associated with this second baby, yet. So I am going to operate under the assumption that Baby #2 was, in fact, infected with HIV, and not transiently exposed to HIV via Mom/anti-HIV antibodies from Mom/not really infected.
In this case, the mother was known to be…
sa smith | March 5, 2014It is frustrating being a scientist in a political climate that is not supportive of science.
But what we have to put up with in the US pales in comparison with something happening right now in Egypt:
More from CNN:
Egyptian army's AIDS-cure claim gets harsh criticism
Maj. Gen. Ibrahim Abdel-Atti is apparently a total nutbar (many details here and more here-- its crazy, click the links!) who says hes cured HIV/AIDS and Hepatitis C.
Well thats all fine and dandy-- I get dozens of spam comments every day from HIV Cure scams:
I was infected with HIV disease which cost me my relationship with…
sa smith | February 5, 2014Do you all remember this story from last year?
Mississippi Baby Born With HIV 'Functionally Cured,' Doctors Say
I wrote about it a bit:
Wait…Did a kid just get cured of HIV?
The sequester and HIV/AIDS
But it was hard to say much without a paper. As I was doing some other reading last week, I was like 'Hey? What the heck happened to that baby? Surely they have a paper out by now!' and they do:
Absence of detectable HIV-1 viremia after treatment cessation in an infant
Quick recap-- Pregnant mom had no prenatal care. She came into the hospital to deliver. They did a quick HIV test, and she came…
sa smith | January 27, 2014If you pay taxes in the US (and many other countries), you are helping fund HIV/AIDS research, including the development of HIV vaccines. This includes my research project, so, YAY! Thank you!
What happens, is, we pay taxes. Part of that cash goes to various government agencies to dole out to researchers. When researchers think they have a cool idea, they write up their cool idea, explain it, add preliminary data and previous publications showing they know what they are doing. Then other scientists read those proposals and go 'Hey, that looks like a good idea! I think they can pull it off!'…
sa smith | January 20, 2014Trolling with Logic had me on on Saturday to talk about HIV! They already got the video uploaded-- audio only will be ready soon!
sa smith | January 16, 2014This happened over the holidays, and I totally missed it:
ISU researcher quits amid allegations of AIDS-research fraud involving millions of federal dollars
Han apparently added human blood components to the rabbit blood to skew the results. The human blood came from people whose bodies had produced antibodies to HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, Bradac said. The presence of these antibodies in the rabbits’ blood made it appear that the vaccine was spurring the animals to build defenses against HIV. “This positive result was striking, and it caught everybody’s attention,” Bradac said.
I have…
sa smith | January 15, 2014Though this paper (the one I began talking about before a holiday break) is the reason for this post, this post is also an opportunity to address a question I have gotten a lot over the years:
Is HIV evolving to be more deadly?
The short answer would be: No, it doesnt appear to be. Scientists have battled 'new' HIV variants vs 'old' HIV variants, and the younger variants are no more aggressive than the older versions.
Replicative fitness of historical and recent HIV-1 isolates suggests HIV-1 attenuation over time
The findings of this paper are, unquestionably, limited. They only looked in a…
sa smith | December 19, 2013Some people have emailed me this story, concerned about the evolution of a 'recombinant' HIV virus that makes people progress to AIDS much faster than 'regular' HIV.
Scientists Find Aggressive New HIV Strain
This is the paper they are referring to:
Faster Progression to AIDS and AIDS-Related Death Among Seroincident Individuals Infected With Recombinant HIV-1 A3/CRF02_AG Compared With Sub-subtype A3
There is a lot to address here, so I am going to break it up into a few posts.
What are 'recombinant viruses'? Are they some new scary development in HIV/AIDS?
There are lots of different '…
sa smith | December 9, 2013Bone marrow transplants and HIV. I have been writing about this topic for a long time. Quick recap.
1. Some people with HIV-1 infection subsequently get blood cancers.
2. Sometimes those blood cancers need to be treated with bone marrow transplants.
2a. If the patient gets a transplant from a CCR5 negative donor, its great! HIV prefers to use CCR5 for a co-receptor, so if its not there, HIV has a bad time. Example: Berlin patient.
2b. If the patient gets a transplant from a regular immunological match, they are taken off of antiretrovirals during treatment. Treating the cancer is a priority,…
sa smith | November 18, 2013When someone is dying, you treat what is killing them first.
This might seem obvious, but its not-- People wondered 'If we can cure people of HIV with bone marrow transplants, then why dont we give everyone bone marrow transplants??'
We can only give HIV+ people with blood cancers that are killing them bone marrow transplants, because of the risks involved in the procedure. Bone marrow transplants are non-trivial. They can kill someone. So unless a cancer is killing an HIV+ person, it isnt worth the risk.
Furthermore, when someone got a bone marrow transplant, traditionally, they were taken…
sa smith | September 9, 2013... From an infection that generally only affects those who are immunocompromised.
*surprise*
:(
You all might remember me talking about Tommy Morrison:
HIV-1, HIV Denial, and boxing
HIV-1, HIV Denial, and boxing: Round 2
HIV-1, HIV Denial, and boxing: Round 3
Morrison died last week, at the age of 44.
"That's the way Tommy took off after he was told he was HIV-positive," Holden added. "When he first was told, I was taking him to seek treatment and to different doctors around the country. And then he started research on the Internet and started saying it was a conspiracy. He went in that…
sa smith | July 14, 2013In light of this news, lots of people are wondering: "If bone marrow transplants 'cure' HIV, why not give everyone with HIV bone marrow transplants...?"
Well, why not?
Certainly the process is not easy or cheap. When I first wrote about this in 2008 (!!!), I mentioned that there is no way this would be a viable treatment option in the Third World (aka the places of the world that need a viable HIV cure the most). But if would could do it in the US, in Europe, maybe we could get the process down. Make it better, make it cheaper, optimize everything until it is cheap enough for Third World…
sa smith | July 7, 2013Over 9000 emails about this bit of news:
Bone marrow 'frees men of HIV drugs'
I actually wrote about this duo almost exactly a year ago. If you want to know more about the science of what is going on, click here:
Two more HIV-1 patients kind of sort of cured-ish maybe
The only new bit to add to the post from a year ago is this:
One has gone 15 weeks, and the other seven, since stopping treatment, and no signs of the virus have been detected so far.
So quick recap for those of you with an aversion to clicking links because I just embed things for fun-- Two patients had been living with HIV for…
sa smith | April 28, 2013*sigh*
*heaviersigh*
One of the many problems we have when treating HIV patients is that HIV can hide (latent). So a cell can be infected with HIV, but not show any signs of being infected. The HIV provirus is just chillin in the host cell DNA, not making any viral proteins/babby viruses, so the individuals immune system doesnt even have a chance to kill it.
Periodically, those 'hidden' proviruses will activate, and make more viruses.
Its fun to look at in a phylogenetic tree-- alovasudden, a virus collected at, say, 5 years post infection, looks like the viruses that were circulating 1 year…
sa smith | March 29, 2013So I freaked out a couple weeks ago when the statistic came out that "28% of South African school girls are infected with HIV":
South Africa: 'Over 25% of schoolgirls HIV positive'
28 Percent Of South African Schoolgirls Have HIV Because Of 'Sugar Daddies,' Health Minister Says
The good news is, this statistic is WRONG:
Media get it wrong on SA schoolgirls' HIV statistics
Last week the Mail & Guardian used a South African Press Association (Sapa) article on its site incorrectly stating that 28% of South Africa's schoolgirls were infected by HIV, compared with 4% of schoolboys.
But the…
sa smith | March 22, 2013The News in HIV the past few weeks has been the same message: Get people tested. Get people antiretrovirals.
It saves lives.
YAY!!!
KINDA! FOR NOW!
Test and Treat in Los Angeles: A mathematical model of the effects of test-and-treat for the MSM population in LA County.
This group of folks looked at a very specific question: What are the anticipated effects of ASAP HIV testing and ASAP antiretrovirals in the homosexual community of LA? If we start implementing this strategy now, in 2013, what will the HIV landscape in this community look like in 2023?
First, the good news--
The people who are…
sa smith | March 20, 2013In A Perfect World, everyone who was infected with HIV-1 would be tested and treated.
1-- People with access to antiretrovirals live longer.
Increases in Adult Life Expectancy in Rural South Africa: Valuing the Scale-Up of HIV Treatment
I really like the introductory paragraph to this paper:
For most of the 20th century, life expectancy increased in nearly every part of the world (1). However, from the late 1980s, the HIV epidemic led to a reversal of this trend in southern Africa, with a large rise in mortality among working-age adults (1–3). In South Africa, life expectancy at age 15…