Follow along with the video below to see how to install our site as a web app on your home screen.
Note: This feature may not be available in some browsers.
The device, which makes a diagnosis using a drop of blood, was developed by researchers at Imperial College London and a company called DNA Electronics. According to an article about the device published in the journal Scientific Reports, the device can give accurate test results in under 30 minutes. That, researchers say, compares favorably with current tests, which can take up to three days to yield a result. The USB stick device uses a mobile phone chip and requires only a small amount of blood, which is placed on a specific spot on the device.
Researchers say the device is 95 percent accurate. “If any HIV virus is present in the sample, this triggers a change in acidity which the chip transforms into an electrical signal,” according to a news release about the device. “This is sent to the USB stick, which produces the result in a program on a computer or electronic device.” Measuring the amount virus in the bloodstream is fundamental in treating the disease because current treatment for HIV, called anti-retroviral treatment, lowers the amounts of HIV in the blood. If the medication were to stop working, for example because of possible HIV drug resistance, HIV levels in the blood would rise, and the device would allow someone to see their levels almost instantly.
A USB-type stick device can measure HIV levels in the bloodstream.
The device has another advantage in that it would allow patients to monitor their own treatment, even in remote areas. "HIV treatment has dramatically improved over the past 20 years, to the point that many diagnosed with the infection now have a normal life expectancy,” said Dr Graham Cooke, senior author of the research from the Department of Medicine at Imperial. "However, monitoring viral load is crucial to the success of HIV treatment. At the moment, testing often requires costly and complex equipment that can take a couple of days to produce a result. We have taken the job done by this equipment, which is the size of a large photocopier, and shrunk it down to a USB chip."
Ideally, Cooke said, the device could make monitoring HIV levels like monitoring blood sugar levels in people with diabetes. He added that the device would be very useful in areas of sub-Saharan Africa where medical facilities or personnel are not readily available. For babies born in remote areas, the device offers a chance to diagnose a newborn quickly. This, researchers said, is “crucial” to a baby’s long-term health. Researchers said they were also looking to create similar devices that could detect other viruses like hepatitis.
USB Stick Device Measures HIV Levels
Scientists are calling it a "functional cure." An experimental treatment regimen is being developed that could offer HIV-positive people something similar to a cure, so they wouldn't have to take antiretroviral drugs every day to manage their disease. In the journal Nature, scientists are reporting that they've achieved remission in primates infected with SIV, a monkey version of HIV, by using a combination of a vaccine and a drug.
Waking a sleeping virus
An HIV-positive person who takes antiretroviral drugs is simply suppressing the AIDS virus to undetectable levels. But the virus is not really gone. It is lying dormant in immune system cells, ready to spring to life the moment someone stops taking the medication. The new approach uses a drug to wake the latent virus. Then, in a one-two punch, the virus is attacked by the immune system, which has been stimulated by a vaccine to target the HIV. Nelson Michael, who directs the HIV research program at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research in Maryland, sees such a "functional cure" as a game-changer in the battle against the AIDS virus.
A doctor draws blood from a man to check for HIV/AIDS.
"This is where we're beginning to edge into that space," he said. "And we're basically developing the rationale that we can actually envision a day that that will be what happens — that someone would not have to take drugs every day, because those things that we could do would buy them a lot of time where they wouldn't have to take drugs. That's really the story." In a two-year study, Michael and his colleague Dan Barouch, director of vaccine research at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, gave a group of 36 rhesus monkeys on antiretroviral drugs either a vaccine alone, an immune stimulant called TLR-7, or a combination of the two agents. The monkeys that got the vaccine alone saw a tenfold drop in their viral load, while Michael said the animals on the TLR-7 drug saw no improvement.
Combination's effect
"The really exciting thing is that when we combined the TLR-7 and the vaccine, then we saw, after we took the animals off of antiretroviral drugs, that the level of virus that they were replicating fell by a hundredfold. And in some of these animals it looks like we may be actually in a position where there's not much virus left circulating at all," said Michael.
He stressed that the monkeys were still infected, but that the virus was no longer causing any trouble because the regimen had trained the immune system to keep it at bay. Michael envisions a "drug holiday" for patients where they go for years without needing antiretroviral drugs unless the virus resurfaces. Researchers are now planning human clinical trials of the vaccine-drug cocktail to begin next year.
Scientists Achieve 'Functional Cure' for HIV in Monkey Model
A Chinese hospital has admitted accidentally infecting five people with HIV because a staff member reused medical equipment that should have been discarded. Officials said that a technician reused a tube used to treat an individual with HIV on other patients. Provincial authorities described it as a "severe violation of procedure". Five people had been sacked at Hangzhou's Zhejiang Provincial Hospital of Chinese Medicine, they said. Provincial health officials said they were informed of the situation on 26 January. But in a statement (in Chinese) they gave no information on how many other patients might have been exposed, what they were being treated for or when the infections occurred.
Awareness of HIV/Aids and how it is transmitted has improved in China in recent years
Those affected would receive treatment and compensation, the brief statement said. Two decades ago low safety standards and insufficient regulation helped spread HIV/Aids in China, and the news of the hospital incident sparked shock and criticism from social media users. "A provincial-level hospital doesn't follow protocols, who can we trust as average citizens?!", wrote one person on Weibo, China's version of Twitter. "This case is exposed, but what about cases that we don't know? There must have been many more!" wrote another.
Blood-selling
Cases of HIV/Aids rose sharply in China after a major scandal in Henan province in the 1990s, when farmers who sold their blood contracted HIV through poor safety practices. Donors' collected blood was pooled together and the lucrative plasma removed. The remaining blood, now cross-contaminated, was then injected back into the donors so they could donate again soon. For years officials tried to cover up the problem and it is still not clear how many were infected. China said in 2001 that between 30,000 and 50,000 people had contracted HIV through the blood-selling scandal, but other officials have since suggested the figure was much higher.
The scandal did help highlight the ways in which HIV could be passed, and rules surrounding blood donation and transfusions have since improved, but illegal practises remain. In 2006, a group of 19 people sued a hospital in Heilongjiang over transfusions from which they contracted HIV. In a recent report, China said it had 501,000 reported cases of HIV/Aids by the end of 2014. It gave no estimate of unreported cases.
Chinese hospital infects five with HIV by reusing equipment - BBC News
Dr. Anthony Fauci has been working to end the AIDS pandemic since the 1980’s, when an HIV diagnosis was a death sentence. Now people with HIV can expect to have a normal lifespan if they are on treatment. Fauci is a world-renown doctor who heads the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the U.S. National Institutes of Health. He says we have the tools right now to end AIDS. “When I say that we have the scientific, evidence-based ability to end the pandemic as we know it, what I mean is that we have extraordinarily effective drugs, but recently those drugs have been shown over the past few years, not only to save the lives of the people who take the drugs, but also to bring the level of virus in an infected person so low, below detectable levels, that it makes it virtually impossible for that person to transmit the virus to someone else." Another tool is pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP. It's a prescription medicine that can help reduce the risk of getting HIV when taken daily.
Children take an afternoon nap at an orphanage in Harare, Zimbabwe, May 26, 2006. One of the biggest problems caused by AIDS in Africa is the number of children who are being orphaned as the disease kills their parents and guardians.
But there are some chinks in the armament. People on the drugs face the same challenges as anyone else who takes medications on a daily basis. Not everyone remembers to take it. Prescriptions can run out. It can be difficult to get prescriptions filled. And then, there are 16 million people infected with HIV not on therapy. Many in this group don't know they have the disease, so they continue to spread the virus. Some of them don't have access to healthcare, so they don't get tested. UNAIDS reports that some 1.8 million people were newly-infected with HIV in 2016. That's a 39 percent decrease from the 3 million who became newly-infected at the peak of the epidemic in the late 1990's. In sub-Saharan Africa, once the epicenter of the AIDS pandemic, new HIV infections have fallen by 48 percent since 2000. But in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, the report says new HIV infections have risen by 60 percent since 2010, and AIDS-related deaths have increased by 27 percent.
That's why, even with the tools we now have, Fauci doesn't see an end to AIDS without an HIV vaccine. A clinical trial for an AIDS vaccine took place in Thailand several years ago. That vaccine proved to be 31 percent effective, "not enough for prime time," as Fauci puts it. Compare 31 percent efficacy to the measles vaccine, which protects up to 99 percent of those who get vaccinated. Fauci told VOA he is not sure if scientists can develop an AIDS vaccine which is that good. "I don't think we're going to get there with an HIV vaccine, but even a vaccine that's 50, 55, at the most, 60 percent effective together with the implementation of the other advances we have, I believe we could turn around the trajectory of the epidemic and essentially end it as we know it."
A nurse takes blood for a free HIV test during a HIV prevention campaign marking the World AIDS Day in Lima, Peru
Another vaccine trial is taking place in South Africa. The results won't be in until 2019 at the earliest, and there's no way of telling if it will be good enough to help end AIDS. Meanwhile, getting more people tested, getting more people on anti-AIDS drugs, consistent use of condoms and limiting the number of sexual partners are the tools we have on hand to reduce the spread of AIDS. Both Fauci and UNAIDS say ending AIDS is up to the global community, and how much effort and money it is willing to commit toward this goal. As we observe the 30th World AIDS Day on December 1st, there's still a lot more to do.
We Have the Tools to End AIDS Now
Your butt must be sore.AIDS is the acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome.
HIV is the Virus which causes the 'deficiency'.
If the HIV is found in animals but animals have the immunity against the virus within themselves, could their antibodies be used in humans to kill the virus?
