Sexually Transmitted Diseases

A UNC bioethicist is leading the PHASES Project, funded by a grant of over $3 million from the National Institutes of Health, in an effort to address the need for effective HIV prevention and treatment options for pregnant women worldwide.

An essential component of HIV that explains how the virus infects other cells and remains undetected by the immune system has been discovered by researchers at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge and the University of London.

A new study conducted by researchers at John Hopkins Medicine has found that most of the proviruses in the latent HIV reservoir are defective but the current methods used to measure size of reservoirs, PCR and QVOA, are not precise in their measurements in that their results often count proviruses with and without defects.

A new study found that girls between 9 and 14 years of age who received a two-dose HPV-16/18 AS04-adjuvanted vaccine over a 6 or 12-month period of time are just as protected from HPV as girls between 15 and 25 years of age who received a three-dose vaccine over the course of 6 months.

Researchers have found that although HIV makes individuals more susceptible to acquire tuberculosis, it is not the cause of the spread of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis.

Although several ambitious initiatives intended to put an end to the AIDS epidemic have been developed and implemented, this laudable goal will be difficult to achieve without substantial and wide-scale changes in HIV prevention strategies.

Chlamydia has posed a healthcare challenge for clinicians due to the serious complications associated with it.

After failed requests for funding and warnings of the inevitable, the Florida Department of Health is investigating what could be the first cases of active Zika Transmission in the United States.

Recently, there have been several breakthroughs in the fight against HIV, including trials that would test an HIV vaccine targeting a specific subtype of the virus, and several prevention methods that would reduce the risk of infection transmission.

Recent studies show that women are at higher risk of contracting HIV; however, measures can be taken to prevent infection, as well as the transmission of HIV from mother to child.

Researchers from the United Kingdom have demonstrated how whole genome sequencing technology can be used to track the spread of infection in Neisseria gonorrhea—an important finding given that the number of drug-resistant strains of the sexually transmitted infection (STI) has reportedly been increasing.

Groundbreaking research has uncovered several possibilities to potentially cure HIV in patients receiving antiretroviral therapy (ART), while a new drug prohibits the virus from maturing, preventing viral infection of new cells.

On the heels of new data suggesting the Zika epidemic will last for another 3 years, a new case reveals there may be a new mode of zika transmission.

A new technological approach to genome editing that can clear latent and productive herpesvirus infections from human cells in vitro could eventually lead to a potent prophylactic.

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) just approved the first test to detect human papillomavirus (HPV) using specific samples.

Since May, there have been nine confirmed cases, with one fatality, in Los Angeles, Long Beach, and Orange counties. According to the California Department of Public Health (CDPH), most of those infected have been gay and/or bisexual men.

The number of physicians and nurse practitioners aware of HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) and its potential benefits has increased dramatically in the years since it was first introduced to the market.

A therapeutic vaccine for genital herpes has the potential to reduce viral activity as well as decrease the number of days of recurrent herpes, as observed in a phase II clinical trial.

A recent review focuses on the biology of human papillomaviruses, their associated burdens, and the clinical data available on HPV vaccine efficacy.

This article seeks to review newer ART agents, as well as those in later stages of drug development, for the treatment of HIV-1 infection.

Incidence of syphilis is on the rise in Europe—particularly among men—according to a report released in May by the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC).

A recently published article in an Indian newspaper claims that thousands of civilians living across the country have contracted HIV through blood transfusions, in less than two years; however, a national AIDS organization is refuting these claims.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has released updated guidelines for the use of nonoccupational post-exposure prophylaxis (nPEP) in persons in the United States, after exposure to human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) outside the health care setting.

In a recent publication, Catherine F. Decker, MD, from Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, Bethesda, Maryland, discussed some infections that have recently emerged as important sexually transmitted diseases.

This new approach could hold promise as a novel method of vaccinating against herpes simplex-2 virus (HSV-2).

A recent study has demonstrated that, although annual HIV infection and transmission rates declined in the United States over the last 5 years, they fell short of the goals outlined in the US National HIV/AIDS Strategy.

On May 16, 2016, the Australian Olympic Committee (AOC) announced that the country’s Olympic team members will receive Dual Protect VivaGel condoms, the world’s only antiviral condom, for the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro.

A recent study has shown that human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) enters cells throughout the entire female reproductive tract from the labia to the ovary—not just in the cervix, as previously thought.

A recent study has shown that stress and depression in adolescent females are linked to human papillomavirus (HPV)-related health problems—in particular, whether the viral infection persists long enough to increase the risk of cervical cancer.

The results of a methylome-wide analysis of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) chronically infected, combination anti-retroviral therapy (cART)-treated individuals recently published in Molecular Cell suggest that HIV+ individuals have an epigenetic age 4.9 years older than healthy controls, resulting in an expected total mortality risk increase of 19%.