California

CHICAGO (AP) Low-income American women and women in developing countries who are tested for cervical cancer could benefit from faster, more aggressive treatment, two studies suggest.

The biological clock ticks for men as well as women, suggesting it is not just females who should be aware of the consequences of starting families later in life, according to research published recently.

Recent malaria research so intriguing that the scientists who conducted it did not initially believe their findings could aid efforts to develop drugs or vaccines against the deadliest form of the disease.

A modeling study projects that antiretroviral therapy will have little impact on transmission of HIV in Africa unless sexual behavior changes. The same model foresees only low rates of transmission of antiretroviral-resistant virus.

A 42.6 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to the Institute for OneWorld Health, the first nonprofit pharmaceutical company in the United States, will create a powerful new approach to developing a more affordable, accessible cure for malaria, which kills more than a million children each year.

Poverty and poor access to legal resources deter many South Africans from seeking redress for human rights violations. South Africa has numerous policy and legal instruments that protect the rights of people living with HIV/AIDS (PWAs), but many of these policies and laws have not had significant impact on the ground, according to a recently released AIDS country profile. The AIDS Profile Project, undertaken by the University of California San Francisco's AIDS Policy Research Centre, found that laws concerning education, the workplace, and the testing and counselling of PWAs had been inadequately implemented. Poverty, stigma, and poor access to legal resources have prevented many South Africans from addressing human rights issues. The South African courts have, however, played a major role in HIV policy, it noted. For example, earlier this year, the Constitutional Court ordered the government to provide all HIV-positive pregnant women and their newborns with Nevirapine and ensure that the drug be made available at all public hospitals. According to the court ruling, the government's previous policy of restricting the drug to 18 pilot sites did not meet its constitutional obligation to offer the best treatment available to patients. The AIDS Profile Project also provides an analysis of the country's political economy and socio-behavioral context to highlight the range of interventions that may affect or be affected by HIV/AIDS.( Source: IRIN 23 September 2002)

California-based Large Scale Biology Corp. yesterday signed an agreement with the Institute of Infectious Disease and Molecular Medicine at the University of Cape Town in South Africa to collaborate on the development of an AIDS vaccine, the Owensboro Messenger-Inquirer reports. The vaccine, which may be designed to treat as well as prevent AIDS, will be produced at Large Scale's plant in Owensboro, Ky., and will undergo testing in South Africa under the university's guidance. Under the agreement, Large Scale retains the rights to sell and market any vaccine in North America and Europe, and the university would hold the rights to sell the vaccine in Africa. Rights would be shared in other regions. The two groups did not announce a specific timetable for vaccine development, but said they would like to have an affordable, effective and locally relevant HIV vaccine

As many as one in every seven Americans newly infected with HIV has a strain that is resistant to at least one of the antiretroviral drugs currently used to treat the infection, a sharp increase from only a few years ago, according to recent studies on drug-resistant viral strains.

The United States Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has issued a warning about home HIV test kits being palmed off onto developing countries.

The Medicines Control Council has given the go-ahead for expanded SA trials of an experimental AIDS treatment that does not involve antiretrovirals like AZT, the drug's developer said on 28/9.