Feds Fund Implantable PrEP Study

Poz.com reports:

A group of 15 researchers and clinical investigators at Northwestern University received a $17.5 million grant to develop an implant capable of delivering meds that protect against HIV, according to a press release from the McCormick School of Engineering. The hope is that the implants would last for up to a year. The five-year project is underwritten by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which is part of the National Institutes of Health. It brings together researchers from 15 different departments at Northwestern, including Feinberg School of Medicine, Kellogg School of Management and McCormick School of Engineering. In the first stage of the project, researchers hope to develop implants that deliver HIV meds in a controlled way. As Kiser noted: “Technology like this could be an important tool in fighting the global HIV/AIDS pandemic in the U.S. and in low-income countries.”

(Tipped by JMG reader Bill)

Ebola Vaccine Trial: 100% Effective

Via Science Magazine:

A highly unusual clinical trial in Guinea has shown for the first time that an Ebola vaccine protects people from the deadly virus. The study, published online today by The Lancet, shows that the injection offered contacts of Ebola cases 100% protection starting 10 days after they received a single shot of the vaccine, which is produced by Merck. Scientists say the vaccine could help to finally bring an end to the epidemic in West Africa, now more than 18 months old. "This will go down in history as one of those hallmark public health efforts," says Michael Osterholm, the director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy in Twin Cities, Minnesota, who wasn't involved in the study. "We will teach about this in public health schools."

The vaccine was developed by the Public Health Agency of Canada.

STUDY: HIV Transmission Is Virtually Zero For Patients "Reliably" Taking Their Meds

Via the Charlotte News & Observer:

Groundbreaking research conducted at UNC-Chapel Hill has demonstrated that potent drug cocktails can disable HIV to the point that the deadly virus can’t be transmitted to other people through sexual activity. The findings were announced Monday by AIDS researcher Myron Cohen at the eigth International AIDS Society Conference in Vancouver, Canada. Cohen, UNC’s chief of the Institute for Global Health & Infectious Diseases, has headed the global research project for a decade and studied more than 1,700 couples.

The landmark study, financed with more than $100 million in federal research grants, confirmed initial results reported in 2011 and demonstrated that AIDS medications known as antiretroviral therapy, or ART, can suppress the virus for years. The virus can reemerge if the patient stops taking the medicine, but as long as it’s suppressed, the virus essentially is harmless and most patients can lead normal, healthy lives. “If people are taking their pills reliably and they’re taking them for some period of time, the probability of transmission in this study is actually zero,” Cohen said by phone from Vancouver. “Let me say it another way: We never saw a case of HIV transmission in a person who is stably suppressed on ART.”

The researchers stressed that they are not advocating unprotected sex for those taking anti-retrovirals.

More About Pluto

UNAIDS Report: Eight Million Lives Saved Globally Since Year 2000

NBC News reports:

The world has made "extraordinary progress" against AIDS, slashing the rate of new infections by more than a third and saving nearly 8 million lives since 2000, a new report finds. Fifteen years of work to make sure more people get drugs that can keep them healthy and keep them from infecting others has had spectacular effects on the pandemic that has killed nearly 40 million people, the United Nations AIDS agency UNAIDS says in its report. Distribution of condoms has averted around 50 million new HIV infections since the HIV pandemic started in the 1980s, and other programs to educate people about how HIV spreads and to encourage safe sex have helped, also. "The world has delivered on halting and reversing the AIDS epidemic," said U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

But temper your celebrations because more than a million are still dying every year. (Tipped by JMG reader David)

New Horizons Reaches Pluto

Via the New York Times:

It was like New Year’s Eve in Times Square as the countdown clock ticked down to zero. “We’re going to do our 10-9-8 thing and you can get your flags out,” S. Alan Stern, the principal investigator for NASA’s New Horizons mission to Pluto told the people gathered here at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, which is operating the mission. “We’re going to go absolutely ape.” About 7:50 a.m. Tuesday, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft made its closest pass by Pluto, coming within 7,800 miles of the surface. The crowd, which included the children of Clyde Tombaugh, the astronomer who discovered Pluto in 1930, cheered.

As soon as it arrived, New Horizons was leaving, speeding along its trajectory at 31,000 miles per hour. For now, no one knows how the spacecraft is faring. NASA released the newest color picture of Pluto, which was sent down on Monday and offers the clearest view yet. Among the science findings so far: a precise measurement of Pluto’s diameter; greater than expected amounts of nitrogen leaking from the atmosphere into space; confirmation of nitrogen and methane ices at the polar region; and images that show strange, and different, landscapes on Pluto and Charon, its largest moon. On Monday, Paul Schenk, a co-investigator on the science team, said, “It looks like somebody painted it for a ‘Star Trek’ episode.”

Bill Nye: Homosexuality Is Natural

Some YouTube commenters don't think he really answered the question regarding "evolutionary sense."

Earth From The Space Station

Nursing Group Opposes "Ex-Gay" Torture

Via press release:

The Academy concludes that reparative therapies aimed at “curing” or changing same-sex orientation to heterosexual orientation are pseudo-scientific, ineffective, unethical, abusive and harmful practices that pose serious threats to the dignity, autonomy and human rights as well as to the physical and mental health of individuals exposed to them. Based on sound scientific evidence, its commitment to human rights and dignity, and its mission of promoting positive health outcomes for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) individuals, the Academy concludes that efforts to “repair” homosexuality, by any means, constitute health hazards to be avoided and are to be condemned as unethical assaults on human rights and individual identity, autonomy and dignity,” the Academy said in its statement on reparative therapy. The statement cited strong scientific evidence concluding that techniques used in reparative therapies are ineffective by failing to achieve intended results and imparting inherently harmful effects on mental and physical health on individuals being pressured to change.

See the full statement. Also today the group issued a statement opposing employment discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity.

VICE: The Truvada Revolution

VICE has launched a three-part series titled The Truvada Revolution. 

A drug called Truvada is the first the FDA-approved means of preventing HIV infection. If an HIV-negative person takes the pill every day, they're nearly 99 percent protected from contracting the virus. Controversy continues to surround the broad uptake of Truvada, but the landscape of safer sex and HIV-prevention changes fundamentally from this point forward—particularly within the gay male community, the population hardest hit by HIV in America. In this episode of VICE Reports, VICE explores the future of the Truvada and its revolutionary impact on ending HIV/AIDS.

Near the end of the clip below, AIDS Healthcare Foundation head and anti-PrEP activist Michael Weinstein talks about his campaign against the use of Truvada as a daily HIV preventive. See Part 2 and Part 3. The series was produced and directed by my pal (and JMG reader) Eric Leven.

FEDS: Start HIV Treatment Immediately

The federal government has halted a large clinical trial on early HIV treatment because results already in conclusively show that newly diagnosed patients do best if they start on anti-retroviral therapy immediately. Via the New York Times:

The study was stopped more than a year early because preliminary data already showed that those who got treatment immediately were 53 percent less likely to die during the trial or develop AIDS or a serious illness than those who waited. The study is strong evidence that early treatment saves more lives, the officials said. Fewer than 14 million of the estimated 35 million people infected with H.I.V. around the world are on treatment now, according to U.N.AIDS, the United Nations AIDS-fighting agency. In the United States, only about 450,000 of the estimated 1.2 million with H.I.V. are on treatment, according to the Centers for “This is another incentive to seek out testing and start therapy early, because you will benefit,” said Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Disease, which sponsored the trial. “The sooner, the better.”

Many HIV/AIDS advocacy groups have long said that treatment should start immediately. New York City's Department of Health began advising immediate treatment in 2011.

STUDY: PrEP Reaches Max Effectiveness Against HIV After One Week Of Dosing

Poz.com reports:

Daily Truvada as pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) against HIV takes five to seven days to reach top estimated effectiveness among men who have sex with men (MSM). High levels of protection are maintained for perhaps a week after the last dose. According to levels of drug detected in peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs), and comparisons of those results to drug levels estimated in previous research to correspond to varying degrees of protection against HIV, one day on PrEP led to a 75 to 91 risk reduction, three days meant a 95 to 97 percent risk reduction, and five and seven days translated to a 98 to 99 percent risk reduction. The presumed risk reduction stayed higher than 90 percent for seven days after the last dose. Although the study included female participants, it was not meant to estimate how well PrEP dosing protects them or other groups, just MSM. The iPrEx study used as the reference point for Truvada’s effectiveness at various concentrations in PBMCs was only conducted among MSM and trans women.

Hit the link for more about the study.

GSK & UNC-Chapel Hill Form Company Devoted To Finding Cure For HIV/AIDS

Via the New York Times:

Years ago, curing AIDS was considered so out of the question that some scientists dared not even mention the possibility. But in the latest sign that attitudes are changing, the British pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline is teaming up with the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to start a research institute and a company aimed at curing H.I.V. infection and AIDS. In an agreement set to be announced on Monday, GlaxoSmithKline will contribute $4 million annually over five years to the research center, set up on the North Carolina campus. It will also move a small number of its own scientists to Chapel Hill. The company and the university will each own half of the new company, Qura Therapeutics, which will have the rights to commercialize any discoveries. The effort will be separate from ViiV Healthcare, the company owned by Glaxo, Pfizer and Shionogi that develops and sells drugs that control, but do not cure, H.I.V.

More from Buzzfeed:

The first approved drug for HIV, azidothymidine or AZT, was patented in 1985 by Burroughs Wellcome, which was subsequently acquired by GSK. At UNC-Chapel Hill, molecular biologist David Margolis and his colleagues have made headlines for their strategy to root out HIV from its many hiding spots (known as “latent reservoirs”) in the body — even in patients already treated with antiretroviral therapy. With that line of research, “what was once provocative and unthinkable became mainstream: let’s try and cure AIDS,” Myron Cohen, chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases at UNC-Chapel Hill, told BuzzFeed News. That scientific strategy, informally known as “shock and kill,” will be at the center of the GSK-UNC collaboration. The leaders of the new effort recognize that their initial investment is fairly small, on the scale of what it takes to develop a new drug. They hope to be a catalyst for more funding — from the government and, perhaps, from other companies — later on.

And from the Wall Street Journal:

AIDS researchers have known for two decades that HIV goes dormant, hiding in so-called latent reservoirs in immune-system cells where it can’t be affected by antiretroviral drugs. UNC has led one potential strategy for a cure in which a drug is used to flush the virus from its dormant state, making it a target for drug therapy. Dr. David Margolis said that strategy is “extremely promising,” but that the cure center will explore others. “We have to have a broad approach,” he said. UNC Chancellor Carol Folt said the hope is that the partnership will expand, inviting in additional collaborators. “I see this as us really putting our muscle behind a pressing issue,” she said, calling an HIV cure “an extraordinary scientific challenge.” In 2013, about 35 million people world-wide were infected with HIV, and 1.5 million people world-wide died of AIDS-related causes, according to the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS.

Posted today to GSK's YouTube channel.

COURT: Twin Girls Have Two Fathers

But this isn't a case involving gay men. Via CNN:

A New Jersey father has been ordered to pay child support for one girl in a set of twins after DNA tests proved he is not the father of both, according to court documents. The mother testified in a paternity case that, within a week's time, she had sexual intercourse with two men -- the man genetic tests confirmed as the father and another unidentified man. The judge acknowledged the unusual circumstances of the case in a ruling this week. "This is a case of first impression in New Jersey and only a handful of reported cases exist nationwide," Superior Court Judge Sohail Mohammed said in his ruling. The ruling cited a 1997 article published by DNA expert Dr. Karl-Hanz Wurzinger that said one in every 13,000 reported paternity cases involving twins have different fathers.

It's called heteropaternal superfecundation and is common for dogs and cats. The phenomenon's incidence among humans is somewhat greater than the reported cases indicate because of the relative rarity of paternity tests.

Researchers Claim Success With Implant Which Delivers HIV Meds For 40 Days

Via Science Daily:

Scientists from the Oak Crest Institute of Science, in Pasadena, CA, report that they have developed a matchstick size implant, similar to a contraceptive implant, that successfully delivers a controlled, sustained release of ARV drugs for up to 40 days in dogs with no adverse side effects. "To our knowledge this is the first implant to be used for this purpose," says Dr. Marc Baum, president and founder of Oak Crest.  Daily administration of oral or topical ARV drugs to HIV negative individuals in vulnerable populations is a promising strategy for HIV prevention. However, adherence to the dosing regimen has emerged as a critical factor in determining effective outcomes in clinical trials. "This novel device will revolutionize how we treat or prevent HIV/AIDS as it delivers powerful HIV-stopping drugs and eliminates one of the key obstacles in HIV/AIDS prevention -- adherence to proper dosing regimens," he adds.

The team plans to develop a new version of the implant that would deliver the medications for a full year.

Hubble Telescope Celebrates 25 Years

From NASA:

The brilliant tapestry of young stars flaring to life resemble a glittering fireworks display in the 25th anniversary NASA Hubble Space Telescope image, released to commemorate a quarter century of exploring the solar system and beyond since its launch on April 24, 1990. “Hubble has completely transformed our view of the universe, revealing the true beauty and richness of the cosmos” said John Grunsfeld, astronaut and associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. “This vista of starry fireworks and glowing gas is a fitting image for our celebration of 25 years of amazing Hubble science.” The sparkling centerpiece of Hubble’s anniversary fireworks is a giant cluster of about 3,000 stars called Westerlund 2, named for Swedish astronomer Bengt Westerlund who discovered the grouping in the 1960s. The cluster resides in a raucous stellar breeding ground known as Gum 29, located 20,000 light-years away from Earth in the constellation Carina.

Court: Chimpanzees Are Legal Persons

NPR reports:

A New York judge has granted two research chimps the writ of habeas corpus – a move that allows them to challenge their detention. The decision, says Science magazine, effectively recognizes chimps as legal persons, marking the first time in U.S. history that an animal has been given that right. The order, dated April 20, requires Stony Brook University to appear in court and provide a legally sufficient reason for keeping the two chimps, Hercules and Leo. A hearing is scheduled for May 6.

The Nonhuman Rights Project (NhRP), the group that filed the case on behalf of the chimps, said in a statement it believed the Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Barbara Jaffe's order "implicitly determined that Hercules and Leo are 'persons.'" But Richard Cupp, a law professor at Pepperdine University who opposes personhood for animals, told Science, "It would be quite surprising if the judge intended to make a momentous substantive finding that chimpanzees are legal persons if the judge has not yet heard the other side's arguments."

Read more at Science.

ASAP Science: What If The Bees Die?

Viral Video Of The Day

Slash Gear reports:

EnChroma wants to color your world, especially if your vision is missing a few colors. Showcasing the new EnChroma specs is a short documentary entitled "Color for the Colorblind." This video will tug at your heart-strings. It puts a face on the perception of colorblindness, as we get to see how impaired color vision affects individual lives, dulling their perception of the world. Thanks to EnChroma's new glasses, a color-blind father can see his child's drawings in full color for the first time, and a man realizes he was missing out on good chunk of the rainbow.

The glasses from the video feature EnChroma Cx lenses. The science behind these lenses is simple. They don't add color, but filter and separate the colors instead using a technique called chromatic contrast enhancement. People with colorblindness cannot distinguish between two colors, often red and green. Instead of appearing as separate colors, the two are muddied together in a dull brownish gray tone. By separating the colors, the lenses add new dimension to those with obscured color vision.

The clip has over 800K views in five days.

(Tipped by JMG reader Daddy Ray)

STUDY: Gay Men Tan More And Have Double The Incidence Of Skin Cancer

USA Today reports:

Gay and bisexual men in the United States are twice as likely as heterosexual men to get skin cancer, a new study shows. One likely reason: Gay and bisexual men are three times more likely to engage in indoor tanning, according to the study to be presented Friday in San Francisco at a meeting of the American Academy of Dermatology.

The study suggests that anti-tanning messages, most often aimed at young women, need to be broader, says researcher Sarah Arron, an associate professor of dermatology at the University of California, San Francisco. "The primary reason that men and women engage in indoor tanning is because of the cultural association of tanning with a healthy look and overall attractiveness," Arron says. "We need to dispel the myth of the healthy tan."

Gay and bisexual women in California were less likely than straight women to tan indoors. The researchers then looked at national health survey data for 2013 and found the same thing: A history of skin cancer was twice as common in gay and bisexual men as in straight men, 6.6% vs. 3.3%. About 5% of gay and bisexual men said they had engaged in indoor tanning in the past year vs. 1.7% of straight men. Gay and bisexual women were, again, less likely than straight women to report indoor tanning.

Nobody can be surprised by this.