| '  The Australian Immigration Department is loosening health restrictions to allow migrant workers with chronic conditions to enter Australia, including those with HIV/AIDS. With this change, Australia hopes to attract skilled migrant workers, who otherwise would have been denied a visa for health-related reasons. The Australian Immigration Department’s new rules would expand upon the current waiver program which allows certain individuals with chronic health conditions into the country. Of the 288 waivers granted last year, the majority were for foreign partners of Australian citizens. During 2008 to 2009, 42 health waivers were granted to foreign migrants on temporary skilled visas. In addition, health bans were removed to allow 138 temporary immigrant workers to continue to reside in Australia.… Read the full story » |
This year, February 7 will mark the tenth annual National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day, a day created to memorialize those African Americans lost to the pandemic, as well as to raise awareness and support needed to fight it.
In commemoration, Anthony S. Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) at the National Institutes of Health, has released a statement addressing the importance of the day. He also details what has already been accomplished, and what obstacles still remain in the fight against HIV/AIDS.
National Black HIV/AIDS…
On January 20, 2010, Merck announced to investors that it would not pursue FDA approval of vicriviroc as an HIV therapy for treatment-experienced patients at this time – a decision prompted by unsatisfactory clinical trial results.
Vicriviroc is a type of drug known as a CCR5 antagonist. This means that it acts by preventing the reaction between the virus and the CCR5 protein, which is found on the surface of human cells.
Because HIV requires the CCR5 protein to replicate, the successful action of such a drug would inhibit virus progression.
Despite positive…
Quitting smoking reduces HIV-positive individuals’ likelihood of contracting bacterial pneumonia, a new study has found.
Patients of a group called the ANRS CO3 Aquitaine Cohort who visited participating AIDS clinics in France at least twice between 2000 and 2007 were tracked for the purposes of the study.
Those enrolled in the study did not have bacterial pneumonia at their first visit and researchers had access to participants’ tobacco-consumption status throughout the course of the investigation.
At the conclusion of the study, patients who smoked were more than twice as likely to contract…
In a study recently published by PLoS One, researchers found that a laboratory marker could effectively predict whether combination antiretroviral therapy (cART) will fail in HIV patients.
The standard of care for treating HIV infection is combination therapy, which involves the use of several antiretroviral drugs to help reduce the chance that the virus may become resistant to one of the drugs used for treatment.
Normally, this type of therapy is considered successful when the levels of virus in the patient’s blood plasma reach undetectable levels. Sometimes, however, this initial success…
For people living with HIV, keeping their immune systems strong is of utmost importance, although it can often be a challenge. In a recently published study, researchers examined the connection between one intervention that may help, vitamin D, and HIV disease progression in pregnant women.
The study examined 884 HIV-infected pregnant women who were enrolled in a multivitamin supplementation trial that did not include vitamin D. After following these women for 69.5 months, researchers recorded information on HIV disease progression, hemoglobin levels, and mortality. Later, they connected this information with the…