30 September 2016 VOLUME 17 ISSUE 39

As the HIV/AIDS epidemic took hold in Africa, researchers studying ways to treat and prevent the disease struggled with the ethical questions involved....After consultations with the research community, Fogarty launched a bioethics research and training program in 2000....Since then, hundreds of academics, scientists and health officials have developed expertise to address the issues affecting their populations in the context of their own culture and research environment.

After 30 years there is still a lot of misinformation floating around about HIV. And that's where the Prevention Access Campaign comes into the picture. The recently launched organization hopes to combat the false and misleading information surrounding the HIV community and replace it with facts.

The World Health Organization (WHO) in Geneva, Switzerland, this morning unveiled the names of the six candidates who are vying to succeed Margaret Chan as director-general....The outcome will also be the result of behind-the-scenes dealing by the different member states.

Some 200 young Malawians are tightly packed onto benches, leaving 2 girls and 2 boys standing in the middle wide-eyed and apprehensive....The 4 are newcomers to Tisungane teen club, in the city of Zomba. After introducing themselves, 200 teens descend to give them a hug or a jovial slap on the back....These 4 have taken the first step in getting the support they need living as teenagers with HIV in Malawi.

Selexis SA...has expanded its collaboration with the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative. Selexis will develop high-performance research cell banks to manufacture multiple HIV envelope proteins engineered by scientists at IAVI’s Neutralizing Antibody Center at The Scripps Research Institute to help induce the generation of neutralizing antibodies against HIV through vaccination.

The data represented [here] come from a survey of nearly 66,000 people across 67 countries and regions. Study participants were asked questions about vaccine safety, importance, effectiveness, and compatibility with religious beliefs....As so often happens with data-driven graphics, the visualization not only reveals information, but also raises new questions along the way.

Activists behind the Fix the Patent Law campaign include practitioners ranging from fields like HIV/AIDS treatment, women’s reproductive health, cancer treatment, and mental health. They plan to submit their own recommendations to the Department of Trade and Industry in the hope that it will speed up the bureaucratic process....South Africa’s health minister Aaron Motsoaledi...wants the gains made in HIV treatment to apply to non-communicable diseases and tuberculosis.

Tryphena Natukunda was crowned Miss Young Positive during a boisterous affair at a Kampala hotel early Sunday,... in an annual competition organized to enlighten people about the dangers of discriminating against people with AIDS....Organizers of the HIV-themed beauty pageant, launched in 2014, say one way of curbing the irrational fear of AIDS that fuels discrimination is for more people living with HIV to open up about their status rather than conceal it.

Following are the platform positions of the Democrat and Republican parties and the positions of the lead presidential candidates of each party with respect to: PEPFAR, Affordable Care Act, pharmaceuticals and drug costs, LGBT issues, Planned Parenthood support, and sex education.

A very low viral load during HIV therapy does not increase the risk of the subsequent virological failure of treatment, according to Spanish research published in HIV Medicine. The findings of the study will provide reassurance that people with very low level viraemia do not need to change their antiretroviral therapy.

Women progress to death at the same rate as men despite lower plasma HIV RNA (viral load). We investigated sex-specific differences in immune activation and inflammation as a potential explanation....Conclusions: With cART-induced viral suppression, women have less reduction in key markers of inflammation and immune activation compared with men. Future studies should investigate the impact of these sex-specific differences on morbidity and mortality.

Up to 17% of all patients living with HIV in the UK remain undiagnosed, and this number is increasing annually....Routine testing in preadmissions could reduce the rates of late diagnosis, currently stated as 40% of all HIV diagnoses in the UK. Late HIV diagnosis is most common among heterosexuals, patients aged over 55 years, and the Afro-Caribbean population.

Although most people that get infected with HIV develop AIDS, rare individuals maintain immune function in the presence of virus....Muenchhoff et al. describe a cohort of pediatric HIV patients who have normal CD4 T cell counts, despite high viremia and lack of antiviral treatment....The immune mechanisms described in these patients shed light on HIV pathogenesis, which may help develop future treatments.