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Emma Brooke-Whitehead had undergone extended chemotherapy without success when doctors at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia decided to try the groundbreaking new treatment about eight months ago. "This treatment was really her only chance," pediatric oncologist Stephen Grupp told ABC News. The treatment works by using a disabled version of HIV to retrain a patient's disease-fighting white blood cells to kill cancer cells.

This is an illustration of what happens when viral DNA enters the nucleus of a cell with low dUTP levels (left) versus high dUTP levels (right). A team of researchers based at Johns Hopkins has decoded a system that makes certain types of immune cells impervious to HIV infection. The system's two vital components are high levels of a molecule that becomes embedded in viral DNA like a code written in invisible ink, and an enzyme that, when it reads the code, switches from repairing the DNA to chopping it up into unusable pieces. The researchers, who report the find...

Australian Researchers Believe They Have Found Cure for AIDS A team of researchers believes that they may have found a cure for HIV by A team of researchers believes that they may have found a cure for HIV by turning the virus against itself.While treatment for HIV has become more successful than ever before at evading AIDS, AIDS remains a threat. In fact, the majority of people infected with HIV will not progress to AIDS for 10 to 15 years, according to Avert, and antiretroviral therapy can delay it even further. However, antiretroviral therapy is expensive and has a multitude...

Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) may have affected humans for much longer than is currently believed. Alfred Roca, an assistant professor in the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences at the University of Illinois, thinks that the genomes of an isolated West African human population provide important clues about how the disease has evolved. HIV is thought to have originated from chimpanzees in central Africa that were infected with simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV), a retrovirus. "If you look at the diversity present across SIV in chimpanzees, it suggests that they have had it for tens of thousands of years," Roca...

All at once, various reports from around the world on a rise in HIV cases: Highest-ever HIV diagnoses in gay men (UK): http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2964493/posts EDITORIAL - HIV on the rise (Philippines) http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2964491/posts 'HIV cases on rise among gays, transgenders' (India) http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2964487/posts HIV on the rise in Tasmania http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2964484/posts Homosexuals leading to rise in HIV cases, says China http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2964483/posts HIV on the rise in financially troubled Greece http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2964479/posts Russia reports 12% rise in HIV - 200 new cases a day http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2964525/posts

REGINA — The latest HIV statistics have been released and although there has been an eight-per-cent increase of new cases in the province these latest numbers represent a seven-per-cent drop when compared to 2009 rates. “We recognize HIV is a serious issue for Saskatchewan, and we’re committed to reducing the HIV incidence in our province and improving the quality of life for people living with HIV,” Dustin Duncan, minister of health, at the All Nations Hope AIDS Network HIV Conference. “We are into the third year of implementing the provincial HIV Strategy and we have made significant progress on a...

The number of HIV cases in Russia was 12% higher in the first six months of 2012 than in the same period last year, government health experts say. Official data shows that in the first 10 months, 703,781 Russians had the virus, of whom 90,396 died. In nearly 60% of new cases, drug injection using dirty needles was the cause of infection. Meanwhile, worldwide, the number of new infections in adults has stayed broadly stable for the past four years. The executive director of the UN's HIV/Aids agency, Michel Sidibe, told BBC News last week that Russia was among a...

erhaps the reporting system has improved. Or perhaps HIV cases are truly on the rise in the Philippines, as public health officials have reported. In the latest UNAIDS Report on Global AIDS Epidemic, the Philippines was one of just nine countries reporting a 25 percent increase in HIV/AIDS cases from 2001 to 2011. The other countries are Bangladesh, Georgia, Guinea-Bissau, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova and Sri Lanka, according to the report prepared by the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS. While the actual numbers are much lower in the Philippines, some African countries that have been hit hard by HIV/AIDS...

The number of gay and bisexual men being diagnosed with HIV in the UK reached an "all-time high" in 2011, according to the Health Protection Agency (HPA). It said there had been a "worrying" trend since 2007, with more and more new cases each year. Nearly half of the 6,280 people diagnosed last year were men who had sex with other men (MSM). Overall, one in 20 MSM are infected with HIV. Of those diagnosed in 2011, nearly two-thirds had not been to a sexual health clinic in the previous three years.

ATHENS, Greece Athens is seeing an alarming increase in new HIV infections, particularly among intravenous drug users, health officials warned Friday, as Greece struggles through a protracted financial crisis in which funding for health care and drug treatment programs has been slashed. While there were about 10-14 new HIV infections per year among Athens drug users from 2008 to 2010, that number shot up to 206 new cases last year and 487 new cases by October this year - a 15-fold and 35-fold increase respectively, officials said. "There is no doubt we have a big and rapidly developing epidemic in...

HIV and Aids support groups in Tasmania are concerned about an increase in infection rates. The average number of Tasmanians being diagnosed with HIV has more than doubled over the past four years to 13. Shaun Staunton from the Council on AIDS, Hepatitis and Related Diseases says up until 2008 the average was five cases a year. "So for example last year there were 15 people diagnosed so there has been quite a big jump in the last four years or so." Mr Staunton says men as young as 18 are contracting HIV and he's worried they don't understand how...

OTTAWA, October 8, 2012, (LifeSiteNews.com) - In a landmark decision last Friday, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that people who are HIV-positive do not need to tell their sex partners they have the disease, as long as they have low levels of the virus and use a condom during sexual intercourse. The 9-0 ruling says that the “realistic possibility of transmission of HIV is negated” if the infected person has a “low viral load and uses a condom”, superseding a 1998 decision. Under the previous law, HIV-positive people who did not tell partners they had the virus could be...

Analysis identifies target for immune response that could improve AIDS vaccines. HIV is finally revealing its weak spots to researchers, bringing an effective vaccine against AIDS closer to reality. A paper published in Nature today1 sheds light on how a vaccine can turn the immune system against the invading virus and so offer protection from infection. The results are also being presented at the AIDS Vaccine 2012 conference in Boston, Massachusetts, this week. The findings help to explain the results from a clinical trial of an AIDS vaccine that have puzzled researchers since they were published three years ago2. The...

Pop quiz, no cheating allowed: if you had to guess, would you say that HIV and AIDS rates among gay men in the United States are A) declining, B) remaining stable, or C) rising? The correct answer is C) rising, at an alarming 8% per year . HIV incidence -- that is, the proportion of a population infected -- among gay men in the United States rises by that amount every year since at least 2001. Overall, this incidence, at 15.4% cumulatively, is just slightly lower than the incidence among gay men in Sub-Saharan Africa.

The nation's most influential pediatricians group says the health benefits of circumcision in newborn boys outweigh any risks and insurance companies should pay for it. In its latest policy statement on circumcision, a procedure that has been declining nationwide, the American Academy of Pediatrics moves closer to an endorsement but says the decision should be up to parents. "It's not a verdict from on high," said policy co-author Dr. Andrew Freedman. "There's not a one-size-fits-all-answer." But from a medical standpoint, circumcision's benefits in reducing risk of disease outweigh its small risks, said Freedman, a pediatric urologist in Los Angeles. Recent...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Science now has the tools to slash the spread of HIV even without a vaccine - and the U.S. is donating an extra $150 million to help poor countries put them in place, the Obama administration told the world's largest AIDS conference Monday. "We want to get to the end of AIDS," declared the top U.S. HIV researcher, Dr. Anthony Fauci of the National Institutes of Health.

Virus Transmits much more Easily Via Anal Intercourse, Research Shows New research pinpoints a major reason why gay and bisexual men remain so vulnerable to the AIDS epidemic: When it comes to the transmission of HIV, a man who has unprotected anal intercourse is at especially high risk. In fact, if that kind of intercourse was only as risky as vaginal intercourse, researchers report, HIV cases among gay and bisexual men would shrink dramatically. It would go down even more, they added, if their rates of casual sex declined. [. . . ] According to UNAIDS, HIV is more common...

A breakthrough in the fight against HIV infections. The FDA has approved a pill that can reduce a person’s risk of getting the virus. Dr.Shawn Hassler said he had been prescribing Truvada to patients prior to this week. “I know for a fact that I am preventing HIV infections in high-risk individuals by putting them on Truvada,” Dr. Hassler said. For the first time in the 30-year history of fighting AIDS, the FDA approved Truvada for use by healthy, HIV negative people who engage in risky sexual behavior or who have a partner with HIV.

RAMALLAH, West Bank - The Palestinian president cleared the way Wednesday for a possible autopsy on Yasser Arafat's remains, following a request from his widow after a Swiss lab said it found elevated levels of a lethal radioactive isotope on the longtime Palestinian leader's belongings. The developments have reignited a storm of speculation over what killed Arafat, who died on Nov. 11, 2004 at the age of 75 at a military hospital outside Paris after decades of fighting with Israel. Arafat's widow, Suha, who rejected an autopsy at the time of his death, said she wanted one done now in...

PORTLAND, Ore. – A listing on Oregon’s sex offender registry paints a scary picture of the man police said tried to sexually assault a boy in a restaurant bathroom before stabbing him on Sunday. Adam Lee Brown was declared a “predatory” sex offender after he was convicted for sodomy in December of 1993. According to news reports from KATU and others at the time, Brown had unprotected sex with children and tried to infect them with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. Prosecutors said he victimized nine kids, five of whom were exposed to HIV. He targeted both male and...