The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has released interim guidance for the use of antiretroviral medication as pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) for high-risk gay and bisexual men who have sex with men (MSM) in the United States. The guidance was released in this week’s edition of Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR).
“For MSM whose behaviors place them at high risk for HIV infection and who do not use other effective prevention methods consistently, PrEP might reduce their risk for HIV infection” ...
By Ambassador Eric Goosby, U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator (Cross-posted from the State Department Blog) The United States President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) mourns the tragic loss of David Kato. As noted in the powerful statements issued by President...
Photo courtesy of the Guardian
David Kato, a prominent human rights activist fighting for the rights of lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) persons in Uganda, died Wednesday on the way to the hospital after a brutal beating in his home. Witnesses reported to police that a man entered Kato’s home and hit him twice in the head, before escaping the scene in a vehicle.
Across the nation, community groups are coming together to condemn Kato’s killing and calling on the Ugandan government, civil society and local communities to protect sexual minorities. U.S. based advocates are calling on the U.S. government to continue its pressure on the Ugandan government to protect the human rights of sexual minorities...
So-called pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) for HIV appears safe and at least partly effective, but clinicians and patients need to take care to avoid possible problems, the CDC said in an interim guidance.Hepatocellular carcinoma patients who have HIV do just as well after a liver transplant as those who are not infected, French researchers reported.
In regenerative medicine, large supplies of safe and reliable human embryonic stem (hES) cells are needed for implantation into patients, but the field has faced challenges in developing cultures that can consistently grow and maintain clinical-grade stem cells. Standard culture systems use mouse "feeder" cells and media containing bovine sera to cultivate and maintain hES cells, but such animal product-based media can contaminate the cells. And because of difficulties in precise quality control, each batch of the medium can introduce new and unwanted variations........ Can optimism be ethically problematic? Yes, as per a newly released study, which found unrealistic optimism prevalent among participants in early-phase cancer trials and suggested that it may compromise informed consent. A number of cancer scientists and ethicists assume that hope and optimism in the research context are "always ethically benign, without considering the possibility that they reflect a bias," write the authors of the study, which appears in IRB: Ethics and Human Research "Others have claimed that unrealistic expectations for benefit are a result of misunderstanding and that the proper response to them is to provide patient-subjects with more information�" But the study cast doubt on both assumptions........ Purdue University scientists have reproduced portions of the female breast in a tiny slide-sized model dubbed "breast on-a-chip" that will be used to test nanomedical approaches for the detection and therapy of breast cancer. The model mimics the branching mammary duct system, where most breast cancers begin, and will serve as an "engineered organ" to study the use of nanoparticles to detect and target tumor cells within the ducts........ 
By Bob Kohmescher, 2011 National HIV Prevention Conference Coordinator, Division of HIV/AIDS Prevention, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) The 2011 National HIV Prevention Conference (NHPC) will be held in Atlanta, August 14-17. The conference will contribute to achieving...By Ronald Valdiserri, M.D., M.P.H, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Health, Infectious Diseases, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services The Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS (PACHA) meets on January 27 and 28 in Washington, DC. During next week’s meeting, PACHA...
By Venton Jones, Senior Program Associate for Communications and Member Education, National Black Gay Men's Advocacy Coalition (NBGMAC)* NBGMAC According to the National HIV/AIDS Strategy, MSM (men who have sex with men) and racial and ethnic minorities are both disproportionately...
Marking a year in at his post as Administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), Dr. Rajiv Shah addressed a packed audience Wednesday regarding the "Modern Development Enterprise," and detailing the agency's ambitious reform agenda - USAID Forward. Oversight and transparency will be key features. 
Search this site : Home About Us I Need . PEER Education Community Blog Calendar HIV AIDS News Job Volunteer Board Contact Us You are here AFC Spring Luncheon AFC Spring Luncheon Use the Events Calender to find out what's happening in your community . Everyone is encouraged to view the calendar listings , but only registered members may post an . event By aidsconnect Posted on 20 January 2011 Date : nbsp 05 02 2011 11:00am 2:00pm Please join us for a very special luncheon as the AIDS Foundation AFC closes its 25th year of service in the Chicago . community AFC is proud to commemorate this landmark anniversary with keynote speaker Dan Savage syndicated columnist , author and founder of the It Gets Better Project Date : nbsp Monday , May 2, 2011 Time : nbsp 11:00 a.m . VIP Reception and
This article is a follow-up to an earlier post to Science Speaks exploring Republican members of the new Congress who are key players in global health policy and funding.
Rep. Denny Rehberg (R-MT), Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), Rep. Christopher Smith (R-NJ), Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), and Rep. Joe Pitts (R-PA) are examined, including their voting records on key legislation such as whether or not they supported the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR.
Nucleic acid testing for hepatitis B virus (HBV) in blood donors may catch potential infection during transfusion, researchers said.
Are you ready for the Chicago mayoral and aldermanic elections on February 22? If not, don’ worry, we got you covered!
Register to vote by mail by January 25, 2011 by submitting this registration form (also available in Spanish). After the form is processed you will be mailed a new voter card.read moreAs we here at AFC have been saying for several years now, health care reform will fundamentally change the fight against HIV and AIDS.read more In research described as "a stark warning" to those tempted to start smoking, researchers are reporting that cigarette smoke begins to cause genetic damage within minutes � not years � after inhalation into the lungs. Their report, the first human study to detail the way certain substances in tobacco cause DNA damage associated with cancer, appears in Chemical Research in Toxicology, one of 38 peer-evaluated scientific journals published by the American Chemical Society........ Full-scale anti-retroviral therapy with three drugs reduces the risk of mothers passing on HIV to their babies even further than standard single-drug prophylaxis.
That was the question addressed in a symposium held at the Newseum in Washington, DC, Wednesday. “The goal is not only economic strength and the creation of jobs,” said former House Majority Leader Dick Gephardt, one of many high-level panelists invited to participate at the symposium. “But I firmly believe we will reduce health care [...] Robot-assisted surgery dramatically improves outcomes in patients with uterine, endometrial, and cervical cancer, said scientists at the Jewish General Hospital's Lady Davis Institute for Medical Research in Montreal. Moreover, because of fewer post-operative complications and shorter hospital stays, robotic procedures also cost less........ Register or apply for a scholarship online
Download and print a paper form: PDF documentread more, Resveratrol, a compound in grapes, displays antioxidant and other positive properties. As per a research findings published this week, scientists at the UT Health Science Center San Antonio describe a novel way in which resveratrol exerts these beneficial health effects. Resveratrol stimulates the expression of adiponectin, a hormone derived from cells that manufacture and store fat, the team found. Adiponectin has a wide range of beneficial effects on obesity-related medical complications, said senior author Feng Liu, Ph.D., professor of pharmacology and member of the Barshop Institute of Longevity and Aging Studies at the Health Science Center........ A year after the devastating Haiti earthquake, there has been "encouraging" progress in public health in the island nation, U.S. officials said. The first drug to treat the underlying disorder instead of the symptoms of Fragile X, the most common cause of inherited intellectual disability, shows some promise as per a newly released study reported in the recent issue of Science Translational Medicine. Scientists from Rush University Medical Center helped design the study and are now participating in the larger follow-up clinical trial........ Just 5 percent of Parkinson's disease cases can be explained by genetic mutation, while the rest have no known cause. But a new discovery by scientists at The University of Texas Health Science Center appears to begin to explain why the vast majority of Parkinson's patients develop the progressive neurodegenerative disease........ Dear Advocate,
My name is Patricia Johnson. I’m a mother to eight, grandmother to ten, a case manager at Lawndale Christian Health Center and I have been HIV-positive for more than 20 years. You know, I got a lot on my plate.read moreThe AIDS Foundation of Chicago (AFC) announced today its appointment of Julie Davids, the founding Executive Director of Community HIV/AIDS Mobilization Project (CHAMP), to the newly-created post of Director of National Advocacy and Mobilization.“Julie is a longstanding leadread more For decades, doctors have looked at fitness levels, weight, and overall health risk factors for heart disease and stroke. Now, they may soon add a new risk factor to the list: activation of the complement system. The complement system is commonly implicated in immune responses, but now there's a role for it in cardiovascular disease. In a new research report appearing in the January 2011 print issue of the FASEB Journal (http://www.fasebj.org), researchers from Europe and the United States show that anaphylatoxin C5a, a protein released when complement is activated, contributes to atherosclerotic disease. C5a causes plaques to break free from where they would be anchored to ultimately cause blockages elsewhere in the body. This new discovery not only shows that C5a is a new marker for identifying risk for heart attack and stroke, but it also establishes C5a as a new therapeutic target for preventing these problems........ In the first-ever quantification of energy expended by humans during sleep, a University of Colorado team has observed that the metabolic cost of an adult missing one night of sleep is the equivalent of walking slightly less than two miles. The new findings will help scientists further understand one of the important functions of sleep in humans, said CU-Boulder Associate Professor Kenneth Wright. Wright, who led the study, said the goal was to measure and quantify energy expenditure during both sleep and wakeful periods........ Save Our State, Lobby Days 2011 is upon us and we’re gearing up fast! The AIDS Foundation of Chicago is hoping to send as many AIDS advocates as possible to the 2011 HIV/AIDS Lobby Days in Springfield on March 2, 2011, but times are tough and we’re anticipating a decrease in the number of scholarships we are able to offer this year.read more