Current HIV Research - Volume 11, Issue 1, 2013

Maedi and visna are contagious sheep diseases which were introduced into Iceland in 1933 by imported sheep of Karakul breed. Maedi, a slowly progressing pneumonia, and the central nervous system disease visna were shown to be transmissible in sheep and most likely caused by a virus. In 1957, visna virus was isolated in tissue culture from sheep brain and maedi virus was isolated the following year from sheep lungs. Bo Read More

In HIV-infected women, co-infections that target the placenta, fetal membranes, genital tract, and breast tissue, as well as systemic maternal and infant infections, have been shown to increase the risk for mother-to-child transmission of HIV (MTCT). Active co-infection stimulates the release of cytokines and inflammatory agents that enhance HIV replication locally or systemically and increase tissue permeability, which weakens Read More

HIV-1 latency remains a major problem for the eradication of viruses in infected individuals. We evaluated the effect of MC1293 on the epigenetic change at HIV-1 LTR and the induction of the latent viruses in the latency Jurkat T cell line. We found MC1293 can activate HIV-1 gene expression, increase the acetylation level of H3 and H4 at the nuc-1 site of HIV-1 LTR. In addition, MC1293 can synergize with prostratin to activate t Read More

The mechanism by which HIV infection transforms into AIDS disease is unclear. Several factors such as the decline in immune response, increase in replication rate, Syncytium inducing capacity and ability of the viruses to infect tumour cell lines are found to be associated with HIV progression to AIDS. What has not been investigated is the role of an increase in affinity for the CD4+ T cells by the HIV-1 T cell lymphocyte-loving (T-tr Read More

Given the recent scale-up of antiretroviral therapy (ART) in sub-Saharan Africa, we sought to determine how often and at what levels do drug-resistant mutant variants exist in ART-naive HIV subtype C infected individuals. Samples from 10 ART-naive Zambian individuals were subjected to ultra-deep pyrosequencing (UDPS) to characterize the frequency of low-abundance drug resistance mutations in the pol gene. Low-abun Read More

Interferon (IFN) preactivation, interleukin-28B (IL28B) alleles, and liver fibrosis act as predictors of response to antiviral therapy against hepatitis C. We aimed to verify if blood IFN concentration, a putative biomarker of interferon preactivation, might depend on carriage of a given IL28B genotype and/or advanced hepatic fibrosis. The study population included 187 hepatitis C patients (75 of whom were HIV coinfected), w Read More

HIV-1 preferentially infects activated CD4+ T cells expressing α4β7 integrin and conventional vaccination approaches non-selectively induce immune responses including α4β7high CD4+ T cells, suggesting that current candidate AIDS vaccines may produce more target cells for HIV-1 and paradoxically enhance HIV-1 infection. Thus it remains a challenge to selectively induce robust anti-HIV immunity without the unwanted Read More

Patients with human immuno-deficiency virus (HIV)-infection have a high prevalence of abnormal bone metabolism and vitamin D deficiency. Vitamin D treatment has some benefit in patients with HIV infection. In this paper, we review the evidence for an association between vitamin D and HIV infection. Literature search was done from Medline. Genetic studies have provided the opportunity to determine which proteins Read More