17/02/06

Conference hears of progress in HIV/AIDS fight

Researchers have found new evidence that HIV evolved from a virus that infects chimpanzees Copyright: LBL

We encourage you to republish this article online and in print, it’s free under our creative commons attribution license, but please follow some simple guidelines:

You have to credit our authors.
You have to credit SciDev.Net — where possible include our logo with a link back to the original article.
You can simply run the first few lines of the article and then add: “Read the full article on SciDev.Net” containing a link back to the original article.
If you want to also take images published in this story you will need to confirm with the original source if you're licensed to use them.
The easiest way to get the article on your site is to embed the code below.

For more information view our media page and republishing guidelines.

The full article is available here as HTML.

Press Ctrl-C to copy

<div class="article-wrap">
<div id="article-introduction">
<h1>Conference hears of progress in HIV/AIDS fight</h1>
<h4></h4>
</div>
<br />
<br />

<div id="article-body">
<p><P>HIV/AIDS researchers have announced progress towards new ways of treating and preventing infection, and have found some new clues to the virus’s origins. </P><br />
<P>The findings were presented last week at the 13th Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections in Denver, United States.</P><br />
<P>Researchers described how a candidate drug called MK-0518 substantially reduced virus levels in 80 per cent of HIV-infected people in a trial in Brazil. </P><br />
<P>In another study, a drug called tenofovir, which is already used to treat people with HIV, is being combined with another called FTC to see if it can also protect people from being infected in the first place.</P><br />
<P>The conference also heard new evidence supporting the theory that HIV evolved from the simian immunodeficiency virus that infects chimpanzees (SIVcpz). </P><br />
<P>Earlier research had suggested this but too few infected chimpanzees were found to investigate it further. Now, researchers have discovered that there are more than 30 strains of SIVcpz, and were stunned to find that in some areas the virus infects up to 35 per cent of the chimpanzee population. </P>The researchers say two of these strains are genetically closer to HIV than any other known virus. <a  href="/sci.cfm?redir=http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/311/5763/943?ijkey=61FV6mmOSWfHY&keytype=ref&siteid=sci" target="_blank" onclick="pageTracker._trackPageview('/tracking/external/'+this.href);" rel="noopener noreferrer"><BR><BR>Link to full article in <em>Science</em></A> <BR><BR></p>

</div>
<div class="quick-links-wrapper">
<h3>You might also like</h3>
[related-articles]
</div>
<p>This article was originally published on <a href="https://www.scidev.net" target="_blank">SciDev.Net</a>. Read the <a href="https://www.scidev.net/global/news/conference-hears-of-progress-in-hivaids-fight/" target="_blank">original article</a>.</p>
<script type="text/javascript">
(function(e,t,n,r,i,s,o){e["GoogleAnalyticsObject"]=i;e[i]=e[i]||function(){(e[i].q=e[i].q||[]).push(arguments)},e[i].l=1*new Date;s=t.createElement(n),o=t.getElementsByTagName(n)[0];s.async=1;s.src=r;o.parentNode.insertBefore(s,o)})(window,document,"script","//www.google-analytics.com/ga.js","ga");var _gaq=_gaq||[];var _gaq=_gaq||[];_gaq.push(["_setAccount","UA-3223906-8"],["_trackEvent","article interaction","republished","https://www.scidev.net/global/news/conference-hears-of-progress-in-hivaids-fight/",null,true])
</script>
</div>

HIV/AIDS researchers have announced progress towards new ways of treating and preventing infection, and have found some new clues to the virus’s origins.

The findings were presented last week at the 13th Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections in Denver, United States.

Researchers described how a candidate drug called MK-0518 substantially reduced virus levels in 80 per cent of HIV-infected people in a trial in Brazil.

In another study, a drug called tenofovir, which is already used to treat people with HIV, is being combined with another called FTC to see if it can also protect people from being infected in the first place.

The conference also heard new evidence supporting the theory that HIV evolved from the simian immunodeficiency virus that infects chimpanzees (SIVcpz).

Earlier research had suggested this but too few infected chimpanzees were found to investigate it further. Now, researchers have discovered that there are more than 30 strains of SIVcpz, and were stunned to find that in some areas the virus infects up to 35 per cent of the chimpanzee population.

The researchers say two of these strains are genetically closer to HIV than any other known virus.

Link to full article in Science