Friday, March 07, 2014

HEALTH - Three Weapons Raise Hope in AIDS Battle

"Injections, gene therapy and treatment for infants raise hope for fighting AIDS" PBS Newshour 3/6/2014

Excerpt

GWEN IFILL (Newshour):  For all of the progress made in the fight against AIDS, it still takes a terrible toll.  More than 35 million people are infected with HIV around the world.  More than two million people are newly infected each year.  And well over a million die from it annually.

But research released at an AIDS conference this week is raising hope about new inroads into treating it and preventing infections.

Jeffrey Brown has the story.

JEFFREY BROWN (Newshour):  Three reports attracted attention.  One involved injections of drugs into monkeys that helped stop infections.  A second revealed promising news of a baby born with the virus and given aggressive treatment.  A third concerned so-called gene editing, altering cells to resist HIV.

The NIH’s Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases has been funding much of this work.  Dr. Anthony Fauci is its longtime director, and he joins me now.

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