More than one-fifth of the monkey meat sold in the markets of Cameroon is infected with SIV, the ancestor of HIV, according to the first major survey of bushmeat. The level and variety of simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV) strains researchers found reveals the risk that new HIV-like viruses may enter humans who eat this bushmeat.
read more
Jack Githae believes Africa could defeat its AIDS epidemic if it would embrace the healing powers of herbs. The Kenyan healer is one of a growing number of African herbalists who believe that ancient wisdom could help cure this modern disease. ?To me this is a natural pharmacy,? says Githae. ?We have seen such miraculous cures from this natural pharmacy in the last 30 years that I don?t tell anybody ?you are going to die.??
read more
AIDS will surpass the Black Death as the world?s worst pandemic if the 40 million people living with HIV or AIDS do not get life-prolonging drugs. The illness has killed 25 million people since the early 1980s, and an estimated 14,000 people are infected each day with HIV, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa, home to more than 28 million HIV/AIDS sufferers. Ninety-five percent of new infections are in the world?s poorest countries, where life-prolonging drugs are not available to most people. Without antiretroviral drugs, most people living with HIV/AIDS will die, pushing the death toll beyond the 40 million killed by the Black Death, caused by flea bites, that almost depopulated Asia and Europe in the 14th century.
read more
Harvard AIDS researchers working with monkeys say the virus overcame an experimental vaccine by changing a single gene, killing one of the 8 animals being tested. This disappointment doesn?t mean that AIDS vaccines are doomed to fail, but it illustrates how hard it will be to produce one.
HIV is already is known to mutate and become resistant to standard AIDS drugs in at least half of all Americans who have the infection. Now researchers have seen a similar outcome with an experimental vaccine that tries to stimulate immune cells to prevent the virus from multiplying.
read more