In an Effort to Prevent HCV, One Campaign Is Educating Youth on Body Art Risks by Larry Buhl In the U.S., an estimated thirty-six percent of people under thirty years-old have tattoos. During tattooing, the skin is punctured up to 150 times a second in order to inject color pigments, leaving the customer at risk for blood-borne diseases including HIV and hepatitis C (HCV). According to the CDC, major research studies have not shown HCV to be spread through licensed, commercial tattooing facilities. However, poor [...]

Two Anti-Cancer Drugs Are Tapped in the Fight Against HIV by Chael Needle New types of drugs are needed in the fight against HIV but some of them are not being developed from scratch. In a lateral-thinking move, drugs that are already approved by the FDA for conditions other than HIV/AIDS are being screened for potential action against the virus. “Drug repositioning” may produce much-needed additions to the armamentarium. Researchers are looking into repositioning two approved anti-cancer drugs. Led by Louis M. Mansky, PhD, professor of [...]

What can we do to address the obstacles to HCV treatment? by Larry Buhl Hepatitis C (HCV) is a “silent killer” in more ways than one. It is a sneaky disease that can leave its victim asymptomatic for many years while doing massive damage to the liver. And too often it’s not talked about, due to stigmatization of the disease. But the alarming statistics regarding hepatitis C are causing more in the medical community to talk about it: Liver cancer, which is often driven by [...]

HIV needs errors to survive, but what happens when too many errors are in the mix? by Chael Needle Take HIV’s already high rate of mutation and accelerate it until the viral population collapses. That’s the theory behind a new class of antiviral therapeutics based on viral decay acceleration (VDA), a mechanism developed by biotech Koronis Pharmaceuticals. VDA builds on Nobel Laureate Manfred Eigen’s concept of a “quasispecies.” A “quasispecies” is a population of constantly evolving virus whose survivability depends on its genomic replication error [...]

Hep Talk Hepatitis C Antiviral Telaprevir Moves Closer to Approval by Larry Buhl Researchers in a recent Phase III study are encouraged by the results of a new drug proposed to be used as part of combination therapy treatment for hepatitis C. In the study ending in September, the drug telaprevir resulted in a sustained viral response (SVR or viral cure) for sixty-five percent of people with a telaprevir-based regimen, as compared to seventeen percent of people in the control arm who received pegylated interferon [...]

AIDS Healthcare Foundation Trains a Research Lens on Probiotics by Chael Needle “Probiotics” has become a new buzz word in the dairy aisle—at least two brands of yogurt are touting their presence. Though nowadays the “live and active cultures” associated with probiotics are often removed through pasteurization, they have always been in foods like yogurt, fermented milk and soy-based drinks. Now that they have crossed over into mainstream marketing from the world of complementary and alternative medicine, probiotics look as if they will increase in [...]

NAPWA helps to promote immune-based therapies by Chael Needle At the International AIDS Conference last June, the AIDS Institute and the National Association of People with AIDS (NAPWA) hosted a Community Treatment Research Forum entitled, “Research Advances from Therapeutic HIV Vaccines and Other Immune-Based Therapies.” Presented by researchers and experts in the field, the symposium covered the latest in potential candidates for the AIDS armamentarium. When it comes to AIDS treatments, most are familiar with antiretrovirals—agents that inhibit or interrupt the HIV replication process. While antiretrovirals have [...]

Rapid Testing for Hepatitis C Waits for Advances in Hepatitis C Treatment to Catch Up

With maraviroc as the only CCR5 receptor inhibitor that has been FDA-approved as an anti-HIV med, and another CCR5 receptor inhibitor, vicriviroc, now focusing solely on clinical trials with treatment-naive patients after treatment-experienced trials did not meet endpoints, this class of drugs could use some good news.