Related papers: HIV drug resistance: problems and perspectives
The development of potent drugs for the control of viraemia in people living with HIV means that infected people may live a normal, healthy life and offers the prospect of eliminating HIV transmission in the short term and HIV infection in…
The United Nations Joint Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) has set a target to ensure that 15 million HIV-positive people in the world would be receiving combination anti-retroviral treatment (ART) by 2015. This target is likely to be reached…
Drug resistance remains a major problem for the treatment of HIV. Resistance can occur due to mutations that were present before treatment starts or due to mutations that occur during treatment. The relative importance of these two sources…
In several countries in southern Africa, including South Africa, the prevalence of HIV remains stubbornly high in spite of considerable efforts to reduce transmission and to provide anti-retroviral therapy (ART). It is important to know the…
The extent to which ART (anti-retroviral therapy) reduces HIV transmission has received attention in recent years. Using data on the relationship between transmission and viral load we show that transmission saturates at high viral loads.…
South Africa has more people infected with HIV but, by providing access to anti-retroviral therapy (ART), has kept more people alive than any other country. The effectiveness, availability and affordability of potent anti-retroviral therapy…
A central challenge in Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) public health policy lies in determining whether to universally expand treatment access, despite the risk of sub-optimal adherence and consequent drug resistance, or to adopt a more…
HIV increases the likelihood that a person will develop TB. Starting them on anti-retroviral therapy (ART) reduces their risk of TB but not to the level in HIV negative people. Since HIV-positive people who are on ART can expect to live a…
Background: Approximately 40% of adults in Botswana are HIV-infected. The Botswana antiretroviral program began in 2002 and currently treats 34,000 patients with a goal of treating 85,000 patients (~30% of HIV-infected adults) by 2009. We…
Anti-retroviral drugs can reduce the infectiousness of people living with HIV by about 96%--treatment as prevention or TasP--and can reduce the risk of being infected by an HIV positive person by about 70%--pre-exposure prophylaxis or…
The epidemic of HIV in Angola started later and stabilized at lower levels than elsewhere in southern Africa. With a relatively small population and a high GDP, Angola is in a good position to intervene decisively to control HIV. The…
If people at risk of HIV infection are tested annually and started on treatment as soon as they are found to be HIV-positive it should be possible to reduce the case reproduction number for HIV to less than one, eliminate transmission and…
Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) evolves with extraordinary rapidity. However, its evolution is constrained by interactions between mutations in its fitness landscape. Here we show that an Ising model describing these interactions,…
Recent epidemiological evidences indicate that arsenic exposure increases risk of atherosclerosis, cardiovascular diseases and microangiopathies in addition to the serious global health concern related to its carcinogenic effects. In…
The prevalence of HIV in West Africa is lower than elsewhere in Africa but Gabon has one of the highest rates of HIV in that region. Gabon has a small population and a high per capita gross domestic product making it an ideal place to carry…
The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV and AIDS (UNAIDS) has set a new 90-90-90 global target for the coverage of anti-retroviral therapy (ART) to be reached by 2020. This would mean that 90% of all people infected with HIV know their…
A simple deterministic model is proposed to represent the basic aspects concerning the effects of different antiretroviral treatment schedules on HIV incidence and prevalence of affected populations. The model mimics current treatment…
The epidemic of HIV in Malawi started early and at its peak 15% of all adults were infected with HIV. Malawi is a low-income country and the cost of putting all HIV-positive people in Malawi onto ART, expressed as a percentage of the gross…
HIV-1 replication can be suppressed with antiretroviral therapy (ART), but individuals who stop taking ART soon become viremic again. Some people experience extended times of detectable viremia despite optimal adherence to ART. In the issue…
Massive research efforts are now underway to develop a cure for HIV infection, allowing patients to discontinue lifelong combination antiretroviral therapy (ART). New latency-reversing agents (LRAs) may be able to purge the persistent…