The European AIDS Treatment Group (EATG), February 2023 For the first time in humans, a research team has shown that, as early as the first days of infection, HIV is able to create reservoirs where it will hide and persist during antiretroviral therapy. Until now, the scientific community did not know exactly when or how these viral reservoirs—the existence of which is a major obstacle to curing...
CNN, Updated November 8, 2019 For the first time in 19 years, a team of scientists has detected a new strain of HIV. The strain is a part of the Group M version of HIV-1, the same family of virus subtypes to blame for the global HIV pandemic. The findings were published Wednesday in the Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes. HIV has several different subtypes or strains, and like other...
ABC Science, 12/10/2019 The retrovirus spreading through the koala population is bad news. But studies of the koala infection have led scientists to a surprising discovery: a “second immune system” in the species, according to research published on Saturday in the journal Cell. This system, which the researchers think exists in all mammals, has a role fighting off viruses that are in...
Guardian, 27 Oct 2017 Scientists have managed to reconstruct the route by which HIV arrived in the US – exonerating once and for all the man long blamed for the ensuing pandemic in the west. Using sophisticated genetic techniques, an international team of researchers have revealed that the virus emerged from a pre-existing epidemic in the Caribbean, arrived in New York by the early 1970s and then...
Oxford University, 12 July 2016 With drug-resistant strains of sexually-transmitted infection gonorrhoea increasing, scientists from Brighton, Oxford University and Public Health England have found that genetic sequencing can track the spread of infection. They show coordinated national and international strategies are required to stop drug-resistance spreading further. Their study, funded by the...
Gizmodo, 15/2/16 Australian researchers have used cutting-edge genome technologies to reveal the genetic makeup of a widespread skin parasite causing serious health problems in Aboriginal communities. The research team identified the genetic ‘map’ of the human parasitic scabies mite, accelerating research that could lead to new ways of preventing and treating scabies infestations and prevent...