Current HIV Research - Volume 13, Issue 6, 2015

About 35 million people worldwide were living with HIV-1 at the end of 2013 and over 25 million have already died of AIDS. AIDS patients show high variability in the speed of disease progression in the absence of treatment. While certain immunological traits have been shown to correlate with accelerated or slowed progression in some subjects, including slow progressors, factors controlling HIV-1 replication and disease kinetics Read More

The RV144 clinical trial in Thailand associated vaccine-induced antibodies with protective efficacy, leading to a focus in HIV vaccine research on protective antibody induction. This has necessitated greater understanding of B cell biology in humans as well as non-human primates (NHP), the principle animal model for pre-clinical HIV/SIV vaccine research. This review covers development and maturation of NHP B cells within t Read More

AIDS remains one of the world’s most serious health challenges, with 35 million people living with HIV worldwide at the end of 2013. HIV sexual transmission accounts for the overwhelming majority of people newly infected, making genital and rectal mucosal tissues the major sites of infection. This review focuses on the role of the female genital epithelial cells in the establishment of HIV infection.

The men who have sex with men (MSM) population in China has experienced a recent increase in HIV incidence. Due to the dual stigma and discrimination towards homosexuality and HIV infection, most MSM living with HIV/AIDS are hard to reach by offline intervention initiatives. We recruited HIV-positive MSM participants in Chengdu, China and assessed whether they disclosed their HIV status to partners, motivated a Read More

Amino acid substitutions in HIV-1 proteins critical to the viral replication cycle have the potential to undermine successful inhibition of those targets, with some mutations leading to either reduced susceptibility to certain medications or complete drug resistance. Phenotypic tests are best suited to quantify the effects of complex mutational patterns on drug resistance; however, the relatively high cost and long turnaround time asso Read More

Family of retroviruses which replicates through the use of the reverse transcriptase enzyme or the enzyme needed to convert RNA to DNA for replication bears Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV). It causes irreversible destruction of the immune system leading to the occurrence of opportunistic infections and malignancies. The eradication of HIV is highly unlikely as the cells of the mononuclear phagocyte system (M Read More

Objectives: Low vitamin D status is associated with both increased disease progression and mortality in people with HIV receiving antiretroviral therapy (ART). However, data are lacking on effects of vitamin status on disease progression and CD4 cell count in people with HIV not receiving ART. We therefore evaluated effects of vitamin D deficiency (serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D [25(OH)D] <50 nmol/L) on the decline in CD4 c Read More

Background: The conversion to HIV-1 single-stranded RNA into double-stranded DNA for nuclear integration is an essential viral step in replication: this process is mediated by Reverse-Transcriptase (RT) and by central polypurine tract (cPPT), a domain where the plus-strand synthesis requires viral primers produced by RNase-H cleavage. Recent studies highlighted the need of investigating the role of RNase-H in RT nucleoside-i Read More