Featured series 
Tag: AIDS and HIV
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Nation & World
One combination of AIDS drugs appears better for starting treatment
Combination drug therapy – also called highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) – made a huge difference in the treatment of HIV infection during the 1990s, changing HIV/AIDS into an illness…
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Nation & World
Strategies to help AIDS patients take medicines are cost effective
The effectiveness of antiretroviral therapy for HIV infection depends on how well patients adhere to complicated drug regimens. Researchers found that among patients with lower levels of adherence to their…
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Nation & World
AIDS vaccine trials underway
A new AIDS vaccine is being tested in Boston, according to senior investigator Clyde Crumpacker, infectious disease specialist in the Virology Research Clinic at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC)…
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Nation & World
HIV-1 positive mothers taking vitamin A increase risk of transmitting HIV to newborns
In many regions of Africa, between 15 and 30 percent of women attending prenatal care clinics are HIV-1 positive. And 20 to 45 percent of children born to HIV-1 positive…
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Nation & World
Statistical work helps calm worries about anti-AIDS drugs and pregnancy
For years, physicians have prescribed antiretroviral therapies for HIV-positive, pregnant women to reduce the risk of babies being born with the AIDS virus. About 6,000 HIV-infected women give birth each…
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Nation & World
RNA technology thwarts HIV
RNA interference (RNAi) is a naturally occurring phenomenon by which cells guard themselves against viruses. The process involves post-transcriptional gene silencing in which specific RNA sequences get chopped into small…
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Nation & World
Kennedy School students help Kenyans battle AIDS
Two Kennedy School master’s students, Shanti Nayak and Nazanin Samari-Kermani, went to Kenya to help a leading anti-poverty organization investigate how best to fight AIDS. Their research, with ActionAid-Kenya, a…
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Nation & World
Patents have negative impact on access to HIV/AIDS drugs in developing countries
Researchers Joan-Ramon Borrell and Jayashree Watal collected sales data for HIV/AIDS drugs in a sample of 34 low- and middle-income countries between 1995 and 1999 to assess the impact of…
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Nation & World
Biostatisticians crunch data vital to AIDS research, genetics
Broadly defined, statistical genetics is the development of methods to analyze DNA. In recent years, the term has been more specifically applied to gene mapping, or the search for locations…
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Nation & World
Trying to prevent mother-to-child transmission of HIV
Harvard AIDS Institute researchers in Botswana are trying to help HIV-infected mothers and their infants. In the rural area of Molepolole, where AIDS Institute researcher Shahin Lockman lives and works,…
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Nation & World
HIV-1 infected children benefit greatly from combination therapy
Combination therapy including protease inhibitors has been available since 1996 for adults with HIV-1 infection. The therapy has slowed the progression of HIV-1 and drastically reduced the rate of mortality…
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Nation & World
Drug patents not crucial in AIDS fight, researchers find
About 25 million people are infected with AIDS in Africa and just 25,000, or one in 1,000, are receiving antiretroviral drug treatment. Patents for anti-AIDS drugs have come under fire…
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Nation & World
Medicaid coverage for anti-AIDS drugs would be cost effective
It’s long been said that “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” A new study from the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis applies the principle to treating…
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Nation & World
Harvard faculty press aggressive agenda for AIDS fight in Africa
A statement signed by more than 100 Harvard faculty members calls upon wealthy countries, in partnership with poor countries, to establish a global trust fund to make life-prolonging antiretroviral therapy…
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Nation & World
Testing to identify drug-resistant AIDS strains is cost-effective
A new study led by the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis, published in the Annals of Internal Medicine in March 2001, finds that testing people with HIV to determine whether…
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Nation & World
T-cell response to HIV proteins may make them vaccine candidates
Development of a vaccine against HIV-1 has long focused on the virus’s structural proteins. These molecules are expressed relatively late in the viral life cycle, after HIV-1 has decreased the…
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Nation & World
Researchers publish HIV study results despite efforts to block
Researchers refused to suppress publication of data that indicates an experimental drug did not slow the progression of HIV infection, even though the drug company that sponsored their research tried…
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Nation & World
Shorter treatment as effective, less costly in preventing HIV in babies
Of the more than 1,500 infants who get HIV from their infected mothers every day, 95 percent live in developing countries where the poverty level is high. Many mothers in…