HIV Vaccine Study Offers Up Possible Antibody Protection Clues

Scientists continued to unravel clues as to why a combination of two preventive HIV vaccines—ALVAC HIV and AIDSVAX B/E—may have worked for some but not others in a large scale clinical trial reported in 2009. A new paper (see below) published online ahead of print in The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) suggests those who produced relatively high levels of a specific antibody after receiving the vaccinations in study RV 144 were less likely to become infected with HIV, compared with those who did not.

Click here to read the full AIDSmed.com article.

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Immune-Correlates Analysis of an HIV-1 Vaccine Efficacy Trial

As seen in The New England Journal of Medicine 

BACKGROUND

In the RV144 trial, the estimated efficacy of a vaccine regimen against human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) was 31.2%. We performed a case–control analysis to identify antibody and cellular immune correlates of infection risk.

The Odyssey of Therapeutic

Vaccines for HIV

by Tim Horn at AIDSmeds.com

While gene therapies that render the immune system impervious to HIV and drugs that potentially purge the virus from resting CD4 cells continue to be watched closely by AIDS cure researchers and advocates, therapeutic vaccines may serve an important supporting role in these efforts, according to a commentarypublished by activist Richard Jefferys in the Spring 2012 TAGline newsletter.

“After a period in which enthusiasm regarding the prospects for therapeutic vaccines waned,” Jefferys writes, “the recent resurgence in interest in research aiming to cure HIV infection has offered new reasons to pursue their development.”

Notable therapeutic vaccines for the virus use HIV particles, sometimes paired with other viruses, or largely intact HIV, to jumpstart the immune system’s perceived ability to control viral replication in the body. Such vaccines have been conceptualized and explored since the mid-1980s. “But the first efforts toward this goal quickly mired therapeutic vaccine research in controversy,” Jefferys writes, “casting an initial pall across the field that was compounded by the failure of any candidate to show significant efficacy.”

Jefferys explains that therapeutic vaccines are now in their third—and potentially most critical—era of development, noting that the first two eras didn’t pan out for important reasons.

In the first era, dating back to the 1980s and early 1990s, therapeutic vaccine candidates of the day faced significant hurdles that were unknown at the time. For example, it was once assumed that HIV is mostly dormant during the asymptomatic and untreated years of infection and that CD4 cells lacked the ability to respond to HIV. Subesequent findings proving these hypotheses wrong, Jefferys writes, “seriously called into question the idea that adding more HIV antigens into the mix via therapeutic vaccination—when the virus itself was failing to induce protective immunity—would be beneficial.”

In the second era, with viral load technology and combination antiretroviral therapy (ART) widely available, therapeutic vaccination plans evolved. One approach was to bolster the immune response to HIV while study volunteers were keeping their viral loads undetectable using available ARVs, followed by treatment interruptions to test the immune system’s ability to control HIV replication in the absence of therapy.

Click here to read the full article at AIDSmed.com

Author: Jeannie Wraight 

as seen on HIVHaven.com

So you’d like to attend AIDS 2012 in Washington DC but you’re concerned it will be too expansive or you’d like to cut costs a bit? Before you write off the idea of attending this important conference or break open the piggy bank, read on and check out some of the cost saving measures that will make your dollars go further.

There are a lot of ways you can save money and still comfortably attend AIDS 2012.

Check back on HIV Haven as we’ll be looking for additional ways for you to save money. We’ll post them as they come up.

Fundraising and scholarships
The deadline for scholarship applications issued by the conference organizers, The International AIDS Society, has already passed. If you have applied for a scholarship, you will be notified, in early April of the scholarship boards’ decision.

Some AIDS organizations do offer full or partial scholarships to their clients, although in these tough economic times, they may be less obtainable then previous years. If you frequent a non governmental organization or AIDS service organizations, it does not hurt to ask if they have available scholarships or can contribute to your conference expenses.

You can also fundraise yourself. Chipin (www.chipin.com), is a safe, easy way to set up a fund that people can donate to. Send your chipin info along with a request for assistance to friends, family, co-workers and acquaintances, asking for small contributions. You can also post this information on your Facebook page or other social media venues. Ask local businesses to donate as well. You may find one wiling to sponsor you. In order to use Chipin, you must have a bank account as well as a paypal account.

Find other fundraising ideas on the internet. There are lots of sites that can give you tips and suggestions to raise funds. Among them are: http://www.fundraiser-ideas.net/There are many good ideas on this site. Click on the various links even if the titles don’t apply.

Hotel
Choosing a hotel can be the most important decision in cost cutting. When judging the price of a hotel, remember to take into account other associated costs that will add or subtract to your total budget.
For example, try to find a hotel that is on the AIDS 2012 website. http://www.aids2012.org/Default.aspx?pageId=319
These hotels offer shuttle service to and from the conference. There are various price levels based on distance and quality of the hotel. Since the shuttle is offered several times throughout the day, distance is less of an issue making hotels further away and cheaper, more acceptable. Always check out additional info on the hotel by going to their full website and reviewing hotel pictures and accommodation lists. Trip Advisors (www.tripadvisors.com) is a must to get a more accurate account of the type of overall experience you will have at a particular hotel.

When looking for the best hotel for you, enquire whether the hotel offers free breakfast. Many hotels and motels offer continental breakfast. This includes some or all of the following: coffee/tea, juice, toast, donuts and cereal. HIV conferences are exhausting, that extra energy boast can help you get through a hectic day.

Some hotels offer a full breakfast for as little as a dollar added on to each day you are booked as a guest. Reading the details on the hotel website can save you a great deal of money. Also make sure they have a coffee machine in the room if you start you’re day off with coffee or tea. If you like a lot of cream and/or sugar in your coffee or tea, ask at the front desk for more additional packets. They rarely provide enough. If you happen to run into the maid, you can ask her for additional supplies and they are usually happy to accommodate. This will save you the cost of your morning coffee/tea.

Hotels book quickly. I strongly suggest you reserve your room as soon as possible. The closer it gets to the time of the conference, the less options there will be in choosing a hotel. The hotels closest to the conference center will be booked first. If you wait, you may end up staying in Virginia or Maryland and not in Washington DC, which will equate to spending more on daily transportation. During major events in Washington DC, it is not uncommon for all reasonably priced hotels to be full.

You can also book hotels at a group rate or attempt to find someone to share a room with to cut costs.
Conference registration
AIDS 2012 offer several registration options at various prices. Prices varry based on the World Bank Country Classification. Check here (http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/15/29/35876528.pdf) if you are not sure what your country is considered.

Conference delegate
This is the general registration type used by most attendees.
If you are from a middle/low income country and register before May 3rd, the cost will be $690. After May 3rd the registration fee is $765.
If you are from a high income country, the fee is $940 before May 3rd and $1045 after May 3rd.

Youth (under 26)/Student/Post-Doc
For middle to low income countries, before May 3rd, the fee is $180 and $200 after May 3rd.
For High income country citizens, the cost for registration is $280 and $310 after May 3rd.

Accompanying adult
This includes entrance to the conference center and opening and closing ceremony. You may also visit the Global Village which is open to the public. You will not be able to attend any plenaries or sessions or be allowed access to the expo center. This registration is only for someone who is accompanying a person with a full registration. The cost is $155 before May 3rd and $170 after May 3rd regardless of country of origin.

Accompanying child (under age 18)
The cost for this type of registration is $55 and $60 after May 3rd regardless of country of origin.

Media registration
Media registration is free. You have to have a letter of assignment from a recognized publication for this option, as well as copies of, or web links, for three published, bylined articles which you can present during the registration process.

If you have written articles or can get three articles published before submitting for registration, as well as find a publication willing to sponsor you, this may be an option. Publications include some organizational newsletters, if they are active, the content is relative and you can report on AIDS 2012 for them. Bloggers are considered but not guaranteed media registration.
Travel to and from DC

Airfare
IAC 2012 offers a 20% discount on airfare for delegates and one guest as well as group rates. http://www.aids2012.org/Default.aspx?pageId=444

Bus
Greyhound   www.greyhound.com  1-800-231-2222
Greyhound runs from most areas of the country. I used San Francisco, California as a starting point figuring most other places would be approximately the cost equivalent or less.

Standard fare from SF to DC is $261 one way. With advance purchase that fare can be as little as $126. The trip takes 2 day and 21 hours. There is a 25% discount offered for a ticket purchased 2 weeks in advance. It is unclear how long in advance you must order your ticket to receive the full discount, if this discount is available for every destination/departure area and if this discount is continually available. If you are considering this as an option, please call Greyhound with your specific travel details for more information.

Greyhound also offers a buy 1 get 1 free offer.
BoltBus   www.boltbus.com  1-877- BOLTBUS (1-877-265- 8287)
BoltBus in a cheap and comfortable way to travel. Unfortunately Bolt Bus only runs directly to Washington DC from New York City and Newark, New Jersey. However, it is still a significantly cheap option to take Bolt bus from another location to NYC and then by a ticket to DC from New York. Boltbus busses usually run every hour to two hours, so depending on the timing, you may have just enough time to grab a bite or cup of coffee before beginning the second leg of your journey. Check out the phenomenal prices:
Direct
New York, NY to Washington DC: $10- $25 one way
Newark, NJ to Washington DC: $17 -$25 one way

With 1 stopover in New York City

Baltimore, MD to NYC: $15-$27 one way
NYC to Washington DC: $10-25
Total: $25 – $52 one way

Greenbelt MD to NYC: $8 – $27
NYC to Washington DC: $10-25
Total: $18-$52

Philadelphia PA – NYC: $8 – $15
NYC to Washington DC: $10-25
Total: $18 – $40

Boston MA – NYC: $15- $25
NYC to Washington DC: $10-25
Total: $25 – $50

Travel around DC
Metro
DC Metro offers train service throughout DC and some parts of Maryland and Virginia. The price is based on distance and not a flat rate per trip, thus it is a bit cheaper the closer your hotel is to the conference center.

As mentioned above, free shuttle buses between the conference center and certain hotels are available by booking your accommodations at a hotel listed on the AIDS 2012 website:  http://www.aids2012.org/Default.aspx?pageId=319
Food
Food is often not covered, or covered adequately, when your travel and accommodations are paid for by a scholarship or organization. You may be left on your own to cover your meals. This can get extremely expensive. Fortunately at AIDS 2012, this shouldn’t be too much of an issue.

If you are a person living with HIV, The International AIDS Society (AIDS 2012 Organizers) offers free lunch tickets with conference registration. When you are registering you will be asked a series of questions including whether you would like to receive lunch vouchers. Each voucher can be used during lunch time for the five full days of the conference. They can be redeemed at one of the participating shops located in the conference center. Make sure to check ‘yes’ when registering and asked if you’d like to receive lunch vouchers, as this may be your only opportunity to obtain these cost cutting coupons. If you have already registered and did not check ‘yes’ but decide later on you need them, you can try to talk to an AIDS 2012 representative at Registration but there is no guarantee you will be provided with vouchers at that time.

The PLWHA lounge offers snacks throughout the conference. In addition to snacks you will also find a quiet place to relax, beds to take a nap, medical assistance if you are feeling ill (there is also a separate medical area in another part of the conference center) and normally you can schedule a message, though I am not positive this will be offered this year.

Certain sessions/presentations offer buffet lunches but you have to keep your eyes open for these.

Dinner can usually be found at some of the evening affiliate events. Make sure to check the handouts provided with your conference bag, as well as information you find on tables throughout the conference. You may also find additional events by stopping at the booths in the Expo Center. Some events even have open bars or wine and hors d’oeuvres.

Some hotels/motels will provide a small refrigerator upon request. Make sure to ask if there is a fee, as some do charge for this service. With a refrigerator you can find a grocery story nearby and purchase a few items to eat that don’t requiring cooking.

Bottled water will be offered throughout the conference center. Coffee and tea is usually offered in the morning and sometimes through out the day at various sessions/presentations.

Contact with home/internet
Few of us are able to leave home for a week without communicating with our family and friends back home. If you live outside the United States, this could become quite expensive.

Some hotels offer free internet while others require a surcharge for internet access in the guest rooms. However, almost all provide free internet in the lobby. If you have a laptop and another computer at home, it’s a good idea to bring your laptop with you. Using Skype instead of expansive phone calls is a great way to cut costs, particularly if you live outside the U.S. If you don’t have internet in your hotel room, you can find a comfortable spot in the lobby to ‘phone home’. Download Skype at:http://www.skype.com/intl/en-us/get-skype/

Free internet is also available at the conference center to email home. Conference attendees are part of a hub that can be used to contact fellow delegates. This can be very useful as the conference center is huge and it’s easy to get separated or lose track of friends at the conference.

*Washington DC has what is called ‘hard water’. If you have long hair which gets weighed down or flat easily, I strongly suggest you do not wash your hair in the shower. It is better to use the bottled water provided at the conference.

AIDS 2012 is sure to be an amazing event. Don’t miss out on opening and closing sessions, the opening day demonstration and the daily morning and plenaries. Make sure you get plenty of rest and lots to eat. Take vitamins if possible for extra energy as you may need a lift to get through long conference days. Listen to your body and don’t over do it! If you are a person living with HIV/AIDS, be sure to check out the PLWHA lounge to meet up with old friends and make new ones.

If you will not be attending, you can access some of the conference sessions by visiting the AIDS 2012 website. The videos posted of the sessions are usually a day behind the live event. HIV Haven will be bringing you as much information from the ground as we can. Check here everyday as well as our twitter account and Facebook page for updates and articles. ‘Let’s Turn the Tide Together’

By David Beasley at Reuters.com

Public schools in the United States are making “little progress” in expanding instruction in how to prevent pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases such as HIV, a new federal study concluded.

Between 2008 and 2010, the percentage of public schools teaching key topics on prevention did not increase in the 45 states surveyed, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.

In middle schools, 11 states saw declines during the two-year period and no state saw an increase, the CDC said. The level of instruction was stable in high schools.

“Little progress is how we’re describing it,” Laura Kann, one of the authors of the study, told Reuters.

The study did not explain why this type of instruction appears to be stagnating, Kann said. “The decision about what gets taught is a local decision,” she said. “We asked schools what they are doing. We don’t ask why.”

Public school instruction can be effective in lowering rates of teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases such as HIV, said Kann.

“We have evidence that teaching these topics can contribute to reduction in risk for HIV, STDs and pregnancy,” she said.

The CDC survey found that the percentage of schools teaching all 11 of its suggested prevention topics in grades 6, 7, or 8 ranged from 12.6 percent in Arizona to 66.3 percent in New York.

Schools teaching eight of the suggested topics in grades 9-12 ranged from 45.3 percent in Alaska to 96.4 percent in New Jersey.

Suggested topics for both middle school and high school include the benefits of sexual abstinence.

The push for higher test scores in recent years could mean that schools are less likely to expand health education, Monica Rodriguez, president and chief executive of the nonprofit group, the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States, told Reuters.

Also, the question of how best to teach students about preventing pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases remains a divisive issue in many areas, Rodriguez said.

“For many teachers, it’s often about fear, fear of controversy,” she said

HIV Care on the Front Line

by Benjamin Ryan at POZ.com

Despite the advent of lifesaving treatment that also controls the spread of HIV/AIDS, 30 years into the AIDS epidemic, almost 1 million Americans living with the virus remain untreated for HIV. For years, the prevailing wisdom has been that the barriers to linking people to care—and keeping them engaged in it—were too great to solve the problem. But a handful of warriors on the front line show that we can indeed keep more people alive while slowing the spread of AIDS.

Click HERE to read what Sabrina Heard of DC’s “The Women’s Collective”, Dr. Bookhardt-Murray of NY’s “Harlem United”, and Mark Douglas of Georgia’s “My Brothaz” have to say about how to get and keep patients in care. 

The UCLA Center for AIDS Research (CFAR), AIDS Institute and the UCLA Clinical and Translational Science Institute (CTSI) are accepting Letters of Intent for seed grant proposals to encourage multidisciplinary collaborations in innovative, unmet, and/or emerging areas of research. 

Multidisciplinary Collaboration -HIV/AIDS -Basic Science
Applicants are invited to submit proposals focused in AIDS-related areas that include studies on viral gene expression, host cell interactions, immune responses to HIV, mechanisms of AIDS lymphoma growth, pathogenesis of opportunistic infectious agents, mechanisms of AIDS dementia, drug and vaccine development, gene therapy, studies of viral RNA expression and DNA levels in infected patients and mechanisms of HIV 1 drug and immune resistance, microbicides and mucosal immunology, and stem cell related approaches to HIV/AIDS.

Multidisciplinary Collaboration -HIV/AIDS -Clinical
Applicants are invited to submit proposals focused in AIDS areas that include studies on the clinical manifestations of HIV and its associated diseases, their treatment or complications of therapy, clinical observational studies, retrospective or prospective clinical outcomes research, treatment interventions or epidemiology studies with a clear clinical focus. Basic laboratory studies, preclinical investigations and social or group observational or interventional studies are not supported by this RFA.

The goal of these grants is to encourage collaborations between multiple disciplines and CTSI institutions and to develop preliminary data for future submissions of program projects or equivalent.

Funding level: A single, multi-disciplinary project for each RFA will be funded, up to a maximum of $200,000 direct costs.

Project period: 2 years (earliest start date, July 1st 2012).

Deadlines
Letters of Intent: 4pm May 1, 2012

Full Proposal:  4pm June 4, 2012

Please see attached RFAs for more information.

[Download not found]

[Download not found]

Herpes? Dislike. Cutting-edge sex researchers are using social networks to prevent STDs from going viral

BY TRACY CLARK-FLORY

As seen on Salon.com

Imagine being able to download a Facebook app that would alert you to your sexually transmitted infection risk based on your friend’s status updates. This may sound far-fetched, and it still is, but as some researchers shift their focus to risk among friend groups, as opposed to just sexual partners, social networks are rapidly becoming a tool to prevent the spread of STIs.

Peter Leone, a professor of medicine at the University of North Carolina’s Center for Infectious Diseases, is one of those experts. Earlier this month, he spoke at an international health conference and underscored the importance of exploring such possibilities. Real-world social networks — in other words, a person’s circle of friends and sexual partners — have already proved to be strong predictors of STI risk, he says. It follows that sites like Facebook, which convene all of those real-world connections in one virtual setting, have huge potential in this arena.

Leone found that when sexual partners of patients newly diagnosed with HIV came in for testing, 20 percent turned up HIV-positive. It might seem counter-intuitive to extend the targeted test circle to those a newly diagnosed patient is merely friends with, but people in the same social circle often sleep with the same people, and might engage in similar risk-related behavior. Instead of looking at people within a particular at-risk demographic, this approach allows them to target known clusters of infection.

Makes you think of the people on your “Close Friends” list a bit differently, doesn’t it?

Leone gives the example of a syphilis outbreak in North Carolina: “When we looked at the networks we could connect many of the cases to sexual encounters, and when we asked who they hung out with, who they knew, we could connect 80 percent of the cases.”

Leone’s team asks patients newly diagnosed with HIV for a list of sexual partners and friends who they think might benefit from testing. Then, with the patients’ permission — permission that is more likely in North Carolina because partner notification, in one form or another, is required by law — they will contact people, sometimes using Facebook, with the alarming news that someone they know has been diagnosed with HIV, and that they might be at risk and should be tested.

There is a major shift here away from the traditional approach of either targeting at-risk demographics — like African-American men who have sex with men — or sexual partners of those infected. “People think that you have to be directly connected to someone, and I think of it as a population-level effect,” he says. “It would be no different from someone who goes to a picnic and gets food poisoning. We’re concerned about everyone that was at that picnic.”

To further streamline the process, researchers have also been experimenting with mailing kits to patients who can then collect their own swabs for tests like gonorrhea or chlamydia — or even HIV. “I think that’s the future,” says Leone.

There are other potential approaches that are more reliant on Facebook — like the hypothetical STI app — but those come with serious privacy concerns. James Fowler, a professor of medical genetics at the University of California, San Diego, and author of “Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives,” has already helped develop an app that utilizes status updates on a social networking platform to predict one’s risk of catching the flu. Certain keywords in your newsfeed might signal an increased risk of catching the virus, and the app could notify you accordingly. Instead of saying, “You have a chance of getting the flu in September,” he says, the app tells you, “You have a chance of getting the flu today.”

A similar application for STI risk is imaginable, although certainly more complicated. The spread of the flu is more straightforward and based on basic contact, as opposed to carnal entanglement. “The difference is there’s much less stigma to finding out which one of your friends has the flu,” he says. It would be a dramatic understatement to say that people are much less likely to post status updates about their herpes flare-up than about their nasty stomach bug.

There are plenty of other prevention approaches that are both easier to implement and less likely to raise major privacy red flags. Common wisdom has it that the power of social networks is in making things go viral, but that isn’t enough when it comes to safe sex messaging. “Spreading information is easy. Changing behavior is hard,” Fowler says. Instead of simply delivering a simple message like “wear condoms,” the aim is to set examples within social networks. “There is good evidence that [in terms of sexual behavior] we’re influenced by seeing what our friends are doing,” he says. “It takes real, deep, close social contact for people to change their behavior.” For example, if someone’s friends start posting status updates about getting tested themselves, it might destigmatize and normalize it. That’s the aim of MTV’s and The Kaiser Foundation’s GYT campaign, which has called on young people to get themselves tested and check in on Foursquare while at their local clinic.

Sean Young, a researcher at UCLA’s Division of Infectious Diseases, tells me that social networking sites are most useful as portals for information and conversation about risk and testing. He’s done research where at-risk individuals are recruited and trained to participate in Facebook groups where they then talk about testing and pass along important resources, all in an attempt to “change social norms that HIV testing is both healthy and admired behavior.”

The research in this area is still young, and there are more dazzling hypotheticals than concrete solutions, but many researchers have a basic intuition that social networking sites have the potential to succeed in areas where traditional medical approaches have failed. Leone puts it this way: “Social marketing is used to sell products, it certainly should be used to talk about health,” he says. “It takes the locus of control away from the public health system and really makes it about the relationships that exist already between friends.”

Updated Slide Set: Mortality Slide Series
The slides in this series analyze trends in rates and distributions of death in the United States, focusing on deaths due to HIV disease (disease directly or indirectly attributed to HIV, including AIDS). They are based on data compiled by the National Center for Health Statistics from death certificates of US residents in the 50 states and the District of Columbia for the years 1987-2008 (2008 being the latest year for which data are available).

Updated Slide Set: HIV Surveillance by Race/Ethnicity (through 2010)
Slides on HIV infection surveillance by race/ethnicity have been updated with information from the 2010 HIV surveillance report.

Updated Slide Set: HIV Surveillance – Epidemiology of HIV Infection (through 2010)
Slides based on epidemiology of HIV infection have been updated with information from the 2010 HIV surveillance report. 

New Evaluation Toolkit: Patient and Provider Perspectives about Routine HIV Screening in Health Care Settings

Understanding patient and provider perspectives is an integral component of evaluating clinical programs to improve clinical services. The purpose of this evaluation toolkit is to offer a package of evaluation materials that can be used to determine the effect of expanded HIV screening activities has on patient attitudes about, and their acceptance of, HIV testing.

Download the guide here: [Download not found]