Professor Creates Powerful HIV Inhibitor
In a significant step toward reducing the threat of HIV, UC Merced Professor Patricia LiWang has designed what may be the most effective chemical inhibitor against infection of the virus. "We need a fairly wide arsenal of HIV drugs because the virus is always mutating, " LiWang said. "Drugs become less effective as time goes on." LiWang's inhibitor, a novel combination of two existing drugs, has a strength that ranges from several times better than existing inhibitors to several hundred times better, depending on the strain of HIV.
What You Need To Know About HIV And AIDS
They don't discriminate. They can affect the young, older adults and pregnant women. They also strike rich and poor, male and female. People from all walks of life can become infected with HIV and AIDS. Knowing how to prevent them, how to live with them, and the strides made over the years to fight them are essential. This knowledge is one of the main goals of World AIDS Day, which is observed on December 1 each year. The Infectious Disease Ambulatory Center (IDAC) at Sinai Hospital of Baltimore is a ray of hope for those who need information so they don't contract the virus or the disease and for those who need to mange their conditions, if they are already infected.
Pediatricians Can Help Prevent Spread Of HIV
A new AAP policy statement, appearing in the November 2011 Pediatrics (published online Oct. 31) outlines how pediatricians can perform an important function in identifying patients carrying HIV before they have a chance to spread the disease further. Although there has been great progress in treatment and efforts to screen high risk populations continue, as of 2006 more than a million Americans carry the HIV virus, which includes 55, 320 adolescents and young adults of whom nearly half are unaware of their infection (against an average of twenty percent of all HIV carriers who are unaware).