2010 International AIDS Conference Lines Up High-Powered Speakers
Researchers Explore Natural HIV Immunity
Racial Disparities Found in Taking of Sexual Histories in Emergency Rooms
(RED) Launches “The Lazarus Effect” Campaign
2010 International AIDS Conference Lines Up High-Powered Speakers
Those who plan to attend the XVIII IAC (AIDS 2010) will not be disappointed. Organizers announced on May 5 that President Bill Clinton and South African Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi will be among 19 who will address an estimated 25,000 attendees. AIDS 2010 will take place from July 18 to 23 in Vienna, Austria under the theme “Rights Here, Right Now.”
President Clinton will deliver keynote remarks on Monday, July 19. Minister Motsoaledi's plenary presentation is on Tuesday, July 20.
"We are delighted to have secured these two high-level keynote speakers at this crucial time in the global response to HIV," said AIDS 2010 Chair Dr. Julio Montaner, President of the International AIDS Society and Director of the BC Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS in Vancouver, British Columbia.
"Universal access is a commitment wealthy nations made to Africa and to millions of people living in low- and middle-income countries in 2005, and those of us assembling in Vienna will not watch silently as the financial resources needed to make good on that promise falter," Dr. Montaner added.
The theme “Rights Here, Right Now,” was selected by organizers to “emphasize the critical connection between human rights and HIV. Human rights will also be the focus of a march and rally in Vienna on Tuesday, 20 July, which will include remarks and a performance by singer songwriter and activist Annie Lennox.”
"Through several plenary presentations focusing on human rights, as well as others on violence against women and girls, incarceration, drug policy and harm reduction, and positive health, dignity and prevention, we will demonstrate how stigma and discrimination are undermining public health," said AIDS 2010 Local Co-Chair Dr. Brigitte Schmied, President of the Austrian AIDS Society. "Equally important, we will show what is being done to address these barriers in all regions of the world," she added.
The full conference program will be available through the conference website at www.aids2010.org in early June and significant parts of the program—including webcasts of key sessions, speeches, slide presentations, abstracts, digital posters, session-specific and daily reports, as well as workshop handouts and audio recordings—will also be online during the conference.
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Researchers Explore Natural HIV Immunity
On May 5, a story published online in Nature reported a recent study of the gene HLA B57, identified in the late 1990s as occurring in a high percentage of HIV-positive people who never progressed to AIDS, about one in 200 positive individuals. A team of researchers from the Ragon Institute of Massachusetts General Hospital, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and Harvard studied nearly 2,000 patients—1,100 "HIV controllers" and 800 who progressed normally to AIDS.
According to the report, the research team, led by MIT Professor Arup Chakraborty and Harvard Professor Bruce Walker, found that “the HLA B57 gene causes the body to make more potent killer T-cells, the blood cells that help defend the body from infections. Patients with the gene have a larger number of T-cells that bind strongly to more pieces of HIV protein than people who do not have the gene. This makes the T-cells cross-reactive or more likely to recognize cells that express HIV proteins, including mutated versions of the virus that develop during infection.”
This new knowledge could help researchers develop vaccines that provoke the same response to HIV that individuals with HLA B57 muster on their own, says Walker, director of the Ragon Institute and a professor at Harvard Medical School.
The finding offers hope that researchers could design a vaccine to help draw out cross-reactive T-cells in people who don't have the HLA B57 gene. "It's not that they don't have cross-reactive T-cells," says Chakraborty. "They do have them, but they're much rarer, and we think they might be coaxed into action with the right vaccine."
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Racial Disparities Found in Taking of Sexual Histories in Emergency Rooms
In a report in ScienceDaily, a study presented on May 4 at the annual meeting of the Pediatric Academic Societies in Vancouver, Canada, found that “emergency department physicians are more likely to document sexual histories of black adolescent girls with symptoms potentially related to sexually transmitted infections (STI) than white teen girls with the same symptoms.”
The study’s lead author, Dr. Carolyn Holland, a pediatric emergency medicine fellow at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, found that “the result is that emergency physicians may be providing less comprehensive services for white teen girls than black ones.”
In her study, Dr. Holland examined 352 emergency visits. Ninety-one percent of black teens had their sexual history documented. Only 62 percent of white teens had their sexual history taken.
"We typically see racial disparities that result in poor-quality health care for non-whites," says Dr. Holland. "In this situation, we're doing white patients a disservice by not asking whether they've had sex. The simple fact is that any girl, of any race, who comes to a hospital for emergency care—or to her primary care physician for that matter—should be asked whether they're having sex. We're not doing a good job of that."
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) data show that black teen girls have a higher incidence of STIs and sexual activity than white girls, but it's not standard of care to document sexual histories more or less frequently for one group than another, according to Dr. Holland.
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(RED) Launches “The Lazarus Effect” Campaign
(RED), a coalition of businesses and celebrities formed to fight AIDS in Africa, has launched a public service campaign promoting the documentary “The Lazarus Effect” and raising awareness of the cost of providing antiretroviral medications (40 cents per day) to those living with AIDS in the hardest-hit areas of Africa.
The campaign, directed by photographer Brigitte Lacombe, has celebrities rattle off items that could be bought for 40 cents.
Featured celebrities include Bono, Penelope Cruz, Javier Bardem, Julianne Moore, Claire Danes, Iman, Hugh Jackman, Orlando Bloom, Lucy Liu, Gabourey Sidibe, Kerry Washington, Bryan Cranston, Jane Lynch, Michelle Rodriguez, Gwen Stefani, Hayden Christensen, Don Cheadle, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Ludacris, Common, Benicio Del Toro, Dakota Fanning and Christy Turlington.
The Lazarus Effect documentary, produced by director Spike Jonze, will air on May 24 on HBO.
To learn more about (RED) and the campaign, go to www.joinred.com.
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