(Press-News.org) DURHAM, N.C. – A new analysis of two HIV vaccine trials that involved pediatric patients shows that the investigational vaccines stimulated a critical immune response in infants born to HIV-infected mothers, researchers at Duke Medicine report.
The finding, reported Oct. 8, 2013, at the AIDS Vaccine 2013 meeting in Barcelona, Spain, examined samples from two previously completed pediatric HIV vaccine trials – called PACTG 230 and PACTG 326 - to determine whether they elicited a key immune response that has only recently been associated with reduced HIV infection.
Searching for evidence of an anti-V1V2 IgG antibody response - the newly identified mechanism for protection against HIV - the researchers found that both of the old pediatric vaccine candidates triggered this key immune defense.
While babies born to HIV-infected mothers had maternally acquired anti-V1V2 IgG antibodies at birth, infants who were vaccinated had better and longer-lasting antibody responses than their counterparts who received a placebo vaccine.
"Effective infant HIV vaccination may be affected by the presence of maternal HIV-specific antibodies and the immaturity of the infant immune system," said the study's lead author, Genevieve Fouda, M.D., PhD, of Duke. "Our findings suggest that vaccination of infants born to HIV-infected mothers can elicit a robust anti-HIV envelope IgG immune response."
Fouda said the results of the study highlight the importance of including pediatric populations in HIV vaccine studies.
"Mother-to-child transmission continues to be an important public health issue in resource limited areas," Fouda said. "Every year, approximately 300,000 infants are infected with HIV. Antiretroviral drugs have reduced the rate of mother to child transmission rate in the United States below 2 percent, but overall in low and middle income countries less than 60 percent of known HIV infected women receive drugs to prevent transmission to their infants. Immune-based interventions such as a vaccine are needed to eliminate pediatric HIV."
### END
HIV vaccines elicit immune response in infants
2013-10-09
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
Juno slingshots past Earth on its way to Jupiter
2013-10-09
If you've ever whirled a ball attached to a string around your head and then let it go, you know the great speed that can be achieved through a slingshot maneuver.
Similarly, NASA's Juno spacecraft will be passing within some 350 miles of Earth's surface at 3:21p.m. EDT Wednesday, Oct. 9, before it slingshots off into space on a historic exploration of Jupiter.
It's all part of a scientific investigation that began with an August 2011 launch. The mission will begin in earnest when Juno arrives at Jupiter in July 2016. Bill Kurth, University of Iowa research scientist ...
Study: Women most often suffer urinary tract infections, but men more likely to be hospitalized
2013-10-09
DETROIT – While women are far more likely to suffer urinary tract infections, men are more prone to be hospitalized for treatment, according to a study by Henry Ford Hospital urologists.
The first-of-its-kind research for the most common bacterial infection in the U.S. is important in providing predictors of hospital admission at a time when the health care industry is searching for ways to reduce costs.
"We found that those patients who were hospitalized for treatment of urinary tract infections were most often older men, as well as those with serious kidney infections," ...
Blood vessel cells can repair, regenerate organs, say Weill Cornell scientists
2013-10-09
NEW YORK (October 8, 2013) -- Damaged or diseased organs may someday be healed with an injection of blood vessel cells, eliminating the need for donated organs and transplants, according to scientists at Weill Cornell Medical College.
In studies appearing in recent issues of Stem Cell Journal and Developmental Cell, the researchers show that endothelial cells -- the cells that make up the structure of blood vessels -- are powerful biological machines that drive regeneration in organ tissues by releasing beneficial, organ-specific molecules.
They discovered this by ...
From slowdown to shutdown -- US leadership in biomedical research takes a blow, says ASCB
2013-10-09
WASHINGTON, DC—OCTOBER 8, 2013—A senior researcher who can't get an answer from a shutdown NIH about a proposed clinical trial on a neurodegenerative disease, a Nobel Prize-winning scientist who fears that a generation of innovators will be lost, and a young investigator wearied at the lab by endless funding cuts and frustrated at home by the halt to promising research into a genetic disorder that affects her daughter—these are the leaders and members of the American Society for Cell Biology (ASCB) who today told a press conference at the National Press Club that the "temporary" ...
EARTH Magazine: New subduction zone may close Atlantic Ocean
2013-10-09
Alexandria, VA –Throughout the history of Earth, supercontinents have formed and ocean basins have opened and closed over timescales of 300 million to 500 million years. But scientists haven't found direct evidence of the in-between phase — an ocean basin that was opening, starting instead to close — until now. Thanks to new high-resolution surveys of the seafloor, scientists think they have evidence of that process starting in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Portugal. If they are right, this nascent subduction zone could close the Atlantic Ocean — in roughly 200 million ...
Researchers identify screening tool for detecting intimate partner violence among women veterans
2013-10-09
(Boston)-- Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) researchers have identified a promising screening tool to detect intimate partner violence (IPV) in females in the VA Boston Healthcare System. The findings, which appear in the current issue of Journal of General Internal Medicine, accurately detected 78 percent of women identified as abused within the past year by a more comprehensive and behaviorally specific scale.
IPV is a major public health issue, particularly among women receiving medical care at VA facilities. The researchers cite "lifetime reports of IPV ...
New urine test could diagnose eye disease
2013-10-09
DURHAM, N.C. -- You might not think to look to a urine test to diagnose an eye disease.
But a new Duke University study says it can link what is in a patient's urine to gene mutations that cause retinitis pigmentosa, or RP, an inherited, degenerative disease that results in severe vision impairment and often blindness. The findings appear online in the Journal of Lipid Research.
"My collaborators, Dr. Rong Wen and Dr. Byron Lam at the Bascom Palmer Eye Institute in Florida first sought my expertise in mass spectrometry to analyze cells cultured from a family in which ...
Diamond 'super-earth' may not be quite as precious, UA graduate student finds
2013-10-09
A planet 40 light years from our solar system, believed to be the first-ever discovered planet to consist largely of diamond, may in fact be of less exquisite nature, according to new research led by University of Arizona astronomy graduate student Johanna Teske.
Revisiting public data from previous telescope observations, Teske's team analyzed the available data in more detail and concluded that carbon – the chemical element diamonds are made of – appears to be less abundant in relation to oxygen in the planet's host star – and by extension, perhaps the planet – than ...
Harvard Stem Cell Institute publishes first clinical trial results
2013-10-09
Starting with a discovery in zebrafish in 2007, Harvard Stem Cell Institute (HSCI) researchers have published initial results of a Phase Ib human clinical trial of a therapeutic that has the potential to improve the success of blood stem cell transplantation. This marks the first time, just nine short years after Harvard's major commitment to stem cell biology, that investigators have carried a discovery from the lab bench to the clinic—fulfilling the promise on which HSCI was founded.
The Phase 1b safety study, published in the journal Blood, included 12 adult patients ...
A better breathalyzer
2013-10-09
The portable breathalyzers preferred by roadside police use expensive electronic readouts, but these devices lack the "immediate and intuitive" color change that tells police whether the alcohol content of a suspect's breath puts them in the legal red zone, said first author Riccardo Pernice of the Università degli Studi di Palermo in Italy. Techniques that do use color change to assess the level of alcohol concentration are typically less expensive, but they cannot give a precise reading of the alcohol concentration and most are use-once-and-toss. Pernice said his team's ...