Current HIV Research - Volume 1, Issue 4, 2003

Despite the development and use of effective antiretroviral therapy, HIV dementia persists and has important socio-economic consequences. Significant progress has been made in our current understanding of the neuropathogenesis of HIV infection, and it is clear that adjunctive neuroprotective therapy in addition to antiretroviral therapy are necessary for prevention and treatment of this entity. In this manuscript Read More

Pulmonary complications of AIDS are one of the major causes of morbidity and mortality in HIVinfected individuals, and are often direct indicators of enhanced progression to an AIDS-defining illness. HIV can be detected in the lung during asymptomatic disease, as well as during the advanced stages of AIDS. With prolonged survival of HIV-infected patients, non-infectious pulmonary complications are becoming more common a Read More

HIV replication occurs principally in activated CD4+ T cells and macrophages. The HIV-1 Tat protein is essential for HIV replication and requires a cellular protein kinase activity termed TAK / P-TEFb, composed of CDK9 and cyclin T1, for its transactivation function. This article reviews recent work indicating that under some circumstances TAK / P-TEFb is likely to be limiting for HIV replication in CD4+ T cells and macrophages, Read More

Direct cytopathic effects cannot explain the massive CD4+ T cell depletion in acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) patients and several indirect mechanisms may be involved. A role has been proposed for apoptosis of uninfected lymphocytes, since lymphocytes from human immunodeficiency virus-1+ (HIV-1) individuals display increased levels of spontaneous apoptosis. This process may be ascribed in part t Read More

The ability of lentiviral vectors to transduce and stably integrate their genomes into non-dividing cells was the major reason for the development of the HIV-1 based vector gene delivery system. The first VSVG pseudotyped lentiviral vectors fulfilled these expectations by ferrying large genetic payloads to nondividing cells in vitro and in vivo. Here we discuss advances in HIV-1 vector systems which lead to improvement in biosaf Read More

Two non-pathogenic scaffolds (represented by the filamentous bacteriophage fd and the dihydrolipoyl acetyltransferase E2 protein of the Bacillus stearothermophilus pyruvate dehydrogenase (PDH) complex) able to deliver human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-1 antigenic determinants, were designed in our laboratories and investigated in controlled assay conditions. Based on a modification of the phage display technology, w Read More

An estimated 800,000 children acquired HIV-infection in 2002, most as a result of mother-to-child transmission (MTCT), and vertically-acquired HIV infection continues to be of major public health importance. Prevention of MTCT is possible with a combination of interventions including antiretroviral therapy (ART) (usually in highly active combinations), elective caesarean section and avoidance of breastfeeding, and whe Read More

Astrocytes are the most numerous cell type in the brain, and their physiological roles are essential for normal brain function. Studies of post-mortem brain tissue samples from individuals with AIDS have revealed that a small proportion of astrocytes are infected by HIV-1 which is linked to the development of HIVassociated dementia (HIVD), a frequent clinical manifestation of HIV-1 disease affecting up to 20% of infected ad Read More