Body

The 18th Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections is being held at the Hynes Convention Center in Boston from February 27 through March 2. Day three of this major HIV/AIDS research conference included the following selected presentations from scientists supported by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health.

iPrEx Update

MADISON — Animals' capacity to adapt is a factor in how they are likely to respond to changing climate conditions.

This conclusion of a new study published March 2 in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B is not especially surprising, says author Brandon Barton, but confirms the importance of accounting for local adaptation when determining the likely ecological effects of climate change.

Some shark species are able to navigate to specific locations up to 50km away, a new study published in the British Ecological Society's Journal of Animal Ecology has found. Re-analysing tracking data from tagged sharks, ecologists found that while some species such as blacktip reef sharks swim in a pattern known as a "random walk", others such as tiger sharks can at times hunt for prey or mates by using "directed walks", accurately navigating long distances across open ocean, often at night.

Have the suspension of central performance management of the 18 week referral to treatment target, and a relaxation of the four hour Accident and Emergency target, changed waiting times asks John Appleby, Chief Economist at the King's Fund in this week's BMJ?

The English National Health Service was once notorious for its excessive waiting times. In December 1999, nearly 160,000 patients were still waiting over six months for their first outpatient appointment and over 50,000 were still waiting over a year for a bed in hospital.

Intensive adherence counseling around the time of HIV treatment initiation significantly reduces poor adherence and virologic treatment failure in sub-Saharan Africa whereas using an alarm device has no effect, according to a study in this week's PLoS Medicine by Michael Chung from the University of Washington, Seattle, USA, and colleagues.

The findings of this study define an adherence counseling protocol that is effective; these findings are relevant to other HIV clinics caring for large numbers of patients in sub-Saharan Africa.

Despite a long-standing requirement for medical device makers to include women in studies they submit to the Food and Drug Administration for device approval, only a few include enough women or analyze how the devices work specifically in women, according to research reported in Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes.

For individuals of white European descent, certain variations of the gene HMGA1 are associated with type 2 diabetes mellitus, according to a study in the March 2 issue of JAMA.

Among patients with sickle cell disease, treatment of a vaso-occlusive crisis (characterized by episodes of severe pain) in the hospital with inhalation of nitric oxide gas for up to 3 days did not result in a shorter time to resolution of the pain, compared to patients who received placebo, according to a study in the March 2 issue of JAMA.

Inhaling nitric oxide gas does not reduce pain crises or shorten hospital stays in people living with sickle cell disease, according to the results of a new study sponsored by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) of the National Institutes of Health.

"Nitric Oxide for Inhalation in the Acute Treatment of Sickle Cell Pain Crisis," will be published in the March 2 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Indiana University scientists have solved a perplexing mystery regarding one of the body's main energy storage molecules, in the process shedding light on a possible route to treatment of a rare but deadly disease in teenagers.

An AIDS vaccine tested in people, but found to be ineffective, influenced the genetic makeup of the virus that slipped past. The findings suggest new ideas for developing HIV vaccines.

The results were published Feb. 27 in Nature Medicine.

This is the first evidence that vaccine-induced cellular immune responses against HIV-1 infection exert selective pressure on the virus. "Selective pressure" refers to environmental demands that favor certain genetic traits over others.

INDIANAPOLIS – Tanning bed exposure can produce more than some tanners may bargain for, especially when they self-diagnose and use the radiation to treat skin eruptions, according to research conducted by the Indiana University School of Medicine Department of Dermatology.

New findings published in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research, confirm the risk of breast cancer among women who are obese and not physically active, and suggests additional mechanisms beyond estrogen.

Mild heart failure patients with a particular condition that results in disorganized electrical activity throughout the heart benefit substantially from cardiac resynchronization therapy with defibrillator (CRT–D), according to a study published in the American Heart Association journal Circulation.

Many people suffer from a devastating condition known as critical limb ischemia (CLI) that can lead to muscle wasting and even amputation. The disease is linked to the blockage of blood flow to the skeletal muscle and current treatment options include rehabilitative exercise and surgical bypass of blood vessels. New preclinical research suggests there may be a way to restore blood supply in skeletal muscle without traditional intervention.