HIV Prevention - Science topic

in HIV / AIDS research, Could fecal microbiota transplantation be considered as an alternative therapy to antiretrovirals?

What treatment (FMT and ART) for people with HIV do you think is the most appropriate?

If the FMT has been around for many years, why do you think it has not been implemented as yet another alternative against HIV?

In many regions of the world, women have little or no authority or independence and are not in a position to demand safe sexual practices such as the use of barrier contraceptives. There is a great need, therefore, to identify methodologies that can be used discretely by women to prevent HIV transmission. An enhanced understanding of the factors that facilitate or retard male-to-female HIV transmission would enable the design and development of effective anti-HIV strategies. Many studies have shown A lactobacillus-dominant vaginal microbiota has been shown to decrease heterosexual HIV transmission. Others say that it doesn´t. Whats your opinion?

Thanks for your help.

It is well known that low "current" CD4 count is correlated with decreased life expectancy among HIV infected people not on ART. It is also well known that CD4 counts vary hugely within the population of HIV negative people. The question is: is the life expectancy (~ natural disease progression) upon acquiring HIV infection the same for someone who had 1200 or 600 CD4 cells prior to infection?

Looking to follow up on 2003 article re: evaluation capacity in HIV prevention programs...

Hi folks,

 There are many papers recommending that needle and syringe programs incorporate peer-workers, and there are many papers that examine the effectiveness of peer-based projects in drug treatment, mental health, sexual health, and other fields.

I am seeking any published literature that specifically examines the effectiveness of peer-based needle and syringe programs.

A quick search has turned up many articles, however these are the only ones I've found so far that specifically examine peer-based nsp/nsep;

A Case Study of the Transformative Effect of Peer Injection Drug Users in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver, Canada

doi:10.3138/cjccj.2013.E30

.

An external evaluation of a peer-run outreach based

syringe exchange in Vancouver, Canada

DOI: 10.1016/j.drugpo.2010.03.002

.

Effectiveness of Peer Education Interventions for HIV Prevention in

Developing Countries: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

doi: 10.1521/aeap.2009.21.3.181.

I'd greatly appreciate links to any other relevant  literature.

Thanks,

Paul.

According to different studies and case reports, ranulas are considered as one of the salivary gland pathologies that are associated with HIV/AIDS. what role does HIV play in occurence of ranula? 

Hi,

I'm looking to obtain samples of people on Truvada who are HIV positive and people who are HIV negative. Does anybody know a good source for this material? Or does anybody know a way of obtaining Truvada in the EU for research purposes?

Thanks,

Alan

Stigma constitutes a major barrier to HIV prevention, treatment and care. It may be due to the community where HIV-positive individuals live, to family members, to sexual partners or to health care providers. Potential study participants may be HIV-positive individuals, HIV-negative people, health care providers, etc. The way stigma is perceived or expressed may give rise to misleading answers due to social desirability bias. That is why the choice of the scale of measurement is so important.

I am planning to model the cost effectiveness of flu vaccine among elderly in India. I want to take more information of Dynamic transmission modeling that is used for infectious diseases.

please i want an article that proved that the immune strength of HIV+ mother determines if the infant becomes HIV infected or not

I am co-authoring a book chapter on the use of drama that combines the ideas of participation and empowerment in HIV prevention research, which partners with young people.

I would like to know which scholars first made the connection between drama and HIV prevention work, as I am struggling to find any articles making reference to these historical roots.

Any ideas/suggestions will be greatly appreciated. 

Warm regards

Carol Maibvisira

HIV tropism

discodancy

Many peoples in our district East Godavari and in Agency area having no awareness on Aids and HIV. So that we are planning to aware the children and people from their School level. Itself so we are selecting some Z.P School and A.P.S.W. R Schools and we go for awareness programs and camps to educate the children. And we are also planning to make an HIV Anti- group. We select some children and conduct some competitions, seminars and workshops and aware them against HIV and Aids.

We are requesting you for the fund needed for our plan and requesting for the addresses of any other organizations who are supporting us.

Can I have an updated list of anti HIV medications (+manufacturers) recommended by the WHO for pregnant women, adults and children in resource-limited settings?

Thank you.

Experimental evidences suggests that HIV infection is not transmitted via arthropods including mosquitoes. However, one paper investigated possible transmission of HIV-1 by African soft tick, ornithodoros moubata. This vector has the potentiality for mechanical transmission of HIV viruses (which otherwise do not survive in arthropods) under field conditions. But this is an old research and any new insights on this topic?

Is this a cause for alarm? As far as we know, HIV is not transmitted by bites of ticks, mites or mosquitoes and there are no evidences to suggest that retroviruses are transmitted by arthropods. 

Evaluation of mechanical transmission of HIV by the African soft tick, Ornithodoros moubata.

 Krentz HB, MacDonald J, Gill MJ.  High mortality among human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-infected individuals before accessing or linking to HIV care: a missing outcome in the cascade of care?  Open Forum Infectious Diseases.  2014 1 (1)

We try to isolate CD56neg NK cells from HIV patients, but the presence of this NK cell subset seems to be correlated with the viral load so I wondered from which viral load you can assure the presence of CD56neg NK cells

Is viread effective if used to prevent HIV infection?

Doing a study on " the role of sexual pleasure in donor sponsored HIV prevention in East Africa". I plan to interview adults 18+ in the community and HIV donor policy workers, I am therefore looking for some indicative questions. First, because sex is a senstive issue in African communities, what are some of the indicative questions I could ask community participants and key informants, obviously with prompts?; secondly, I need to know how to phrase the questions related to 'sexual pleasure' in the context of HIV prevention? What is the best way to get into the 'sexual pleasure' related questions without coming across as insensitive to community participants? 

What innovative ways can one use to promote consistent uptake of HIV testing among Marps without the fear of stigmatization from the community or other healthcare providers in Sub-Saharan Africa?

I saw last week a pregnant girl, 17 week of gestation. She is 38 years old and she is a new HIV diagnosis. Her CD4 were 576, HIVRNA <1000 cp/ml. I've started immediately ARV therapy with a combination on tenofovir/emtricitabine and lopinavir/ritonavir. Two days later she told me she started vomiting many times during the days and I decided to stop lopinavir/r. What do you think could be the best option in substitution the PI: another PI like Atazanavir/r 300/100 (with half dose of ritonavir in confront of lopinavir) or, changing completely class and avoiding ritonavir, Raltegravir bid?

I am doing a study on monitoring and evaluation system and am trying how the system is designed using a a case study in Kenya. Are there any publications and journals in this area. Kindly share any useful information.

Better if it includes the constructs of TPB.

The target audience is virally unsuppressed HIV-positive gay-identified men in the U.S. who have had condomless anal sex with HIV-negative or unknown status male partners.

Especially in understanding negotiation of condom use.

Doing a systematic literature review on risk associated with MSMs and PEP.

To be used at 0, 3 and 6 monthly intervals.

I am conducting a systematic review on resilience in high-risk, HIV-negative sexual minority men. If you're willing, would you mind sending any peer-reviewed articles you may have authored, or know of, that are possibly a good fit? Articles need to meet the following criteria:

If you are unsure, I'd appreciate a citation or PDF anyway, and then I can screen the article. Please backchannel articles to enwoodward@suffolk.edu. Thanks so much for any help!

Early infant diagnosis.

My focus is not particularly on those infected or affected by HIV/AIDS, but on international donors who focus mainly on conservative, conditionality based abstinence only type funding where the recipient countries have to sign contracts disallowing them from using such funds for sex workers, 'loose' men and women in society. One of the principle ways for the HIV infection is via sex. I want to find out why the world's two largest HIV donors do not fund anything on sexual pleasure, sexuality etc. even though researches have found that this can encourage use of condom, minimize HIV risks and save innocent lives. If we want to combat the scourge of HIV shouldn't we be doing everything rather than limiting ourselves to moralistic methods which are unhelpful and may have led to many deaths among young people who are no longer as moralistic as these donors? I therefore plan to interview key policy officers in the US and UN's Africa head offices in Nairobi, to determine their reasons and their new models of funding in Africa in light of discovery, that a sexual pleasure can help limit invention? What might be the best research methodology for this type of research? Semi-structured interviews only? Literature review? I do not think focus group will work as these guys are seniors officers who might not have time to meet together. Your suggestions? What might be the best research methodology for a research focused on policy-type people?

As researchers design new HIV prevention interventions or as communities consider new intervention strategies they should be mindful of how cost effective alternatives might be in reducing the spread of the virus in a given population under different model assumptions. Some researchers have published articles on the cost effectiveness of their interventions under different assumptions, but I don't know of an easy common tool or tools that could do this to make assessments and comparisons across interventions easier. Does anyone know of such an easy to use tool that might be available on the web one could plug values into to get such an rough assessment (e.g., target population (ideally the tool would store updated values for prevalence in that population), effect size of intervention or similar parameter, cost of intervention, numbers of individuals reached, etc.).

We know condom use to be effective in preventing HIV transmission but can we confidently say it works in all societies irrespective of prevailing social conditions?

It is commonly accepted to inactivate HIV by heat (56°C 30min), but I was wondering what is the rationality and if any study have been published about it?

Presently HIV drug therapy is widely available in India. now there is need for the research to do among the drug therapy users.

I am engaged with a study team that is trying to evaluate models for delivery of Pre exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) to HIV serodiscordant groups. The study is designed to evaluate how well either of three models would ensure PrEP (a) gets to the people who needs it and (b) people who start on PrEP continue to use it. The question that keeps coming up is how would you be able to report that your model of service deliver for PrEP is effective. I think this would require developing a composite score. Any possible help with this?

Bangladesh is a resource limited country and most of the HIV infected people are poor. Which research can reduce management cost?

This may be an unmatured question but I have had this doubt from my college days.

Since dendritic cells deliver HIV by cell synapses.

.

Most at risk people for HIV/AIDS are hidden in the population because of stigma, illegality of their acts like injecting drug use etc., and therefore we can not count them by using direct ways like census. What are the most suitable ways then?

This is to investigate the prevention of mother to child HIV transmission using an alternative therapy to ARVs.

I am really surprised when I see absence of any discussion on the sexual behaviour influenced by alcohol consumption.

For instance: http://www.aidsmap.com/HIV-prevention-policy/cat/80322/

Great progress has been made in the global response to the AIDS epidemic. However, HIV management and HAART spurred substantial increases in funding of health care. Because of enormous challenge of sustaining political, programmatic, and technical commitment, along with national and international funding, these achievements are fragile.

Low literate community members ask this question; there is need to find less technical ways to clarify.

Since the virus incorporates its genome into the host cell, I think inhibiting all or some of host cell transcription factors could be a potential target for HIV proliferation.

The HIV-infected mothers may have multiple physical, emotional, and social concerns, including coming to terms with the reality of their own infection while facing uncertainty about the HIV status of their infant. If the child is seropositive the mother usually has difficulty to inform him about his illness.

Who should tell the child's status? (doctor, mother or psychologist)

I'm writing a college research paper on this subject. Is there any document that opposes adopting option B+? Scholarly would be preferable but anything will help. I found lancet article and commentary on Is option B+ best? however, could not find any more.

In Nigeria, rapid antibody testing is used by most blood banks with only a few centers using 4th generation ELISA. Many of us are worried over the window period challenge with antibody testing.

I was doubtful while writing a postmortem finding about a HIV positive patient in a mortuary. Can the HIV virus be transferred from the HIV/AIDS affected person's blood after his or her death? If so, then how many days can the virus live in the dead body?

This study is to be conducted in a low resource setting.

Nowadays, due to the recently success of pre-exposure antiretrovial therapies, the investigation on the use of anti HIV gels and the employment of male circumcision, there are possible future options to prevent HIV infection. Also the research in the vaccines field has reported relevant advances. Which will be the balance between the two trends in the upcoming years?