#People living with HIV

[worldaidsday]

Launch of World AIDS Day Report 2024—Take The Rights Path.

Launch of World AIDS Day Report 2024—Take The Rights Path

Watch the UNAIDS - Press Conference: Launch of World AIDS Day Report 2024!

[hivinfo]

Depression in People Living with HIV

Depression in People Living with HIV

Depression is a mental health condition that affects millions of people worldwide. It is characterized by persistent feelings of sadness, hopelessness, and worthlessness. Depression can occur in anyone, regardless of age, gender, race, or social status. However, it is more common in people living with chronic illnesses such as HIV.

HIV (human immunodeficiency virus) is a virus that attacks the immune system, leaving the infected person vulnerable to infections and illnesses. HIV can be transmitted through unprotected sexual intercourse, sharing needles, and from mother to child during childbirth or breastfeeding. There is currently no cure for HIV, but with proper treatment, people living with HIV can manage the virus and live long, healthy lives.

Depression is a common mental health condition in people living with HIV. In fact, studies have shown that people living with HIV are twice as likely to experience depression than the general population. Depression can have a significant impact on the physical and emotional well-being of people with HIV, affecting their ability to manage their illness and adhere to their treatment.

Symptoms of Depression in People Living with HIV

Depression can present itself in different ways in people living with HIV. Some common symptoms include:

Persistent feelings of sadness, hopelessness, and worthlessness

Loss of interest in activities that were once enjoyable

Fatigue and lack of energy

Difficulty sleeping or sleeping too much

Appetite changes

Difficulty concentrating or making decisions

Thoughts of death or suicide

It is important to note that not everyone with depression experiences all of these symptoms. Additionally, some of these symptoms can also be caused by HIV itself or the medication used to treat it. It is essential to speak with a healthcare provider to receive a proper diagnosis and treatment.

Causes of Depression in People Living with HIV

There is no single cause of depression in people living with HIV. It is often a combination of factors that contribute to the development of the condition. Some of these factors include:

Social isolation: People living with HIV may experience social isolation due to the stigma and discrimination associated with the virus. This isolation can lead to feelings of loneliness, which can contribute to depression.

Chronic stress: Living with a chronic illness like HIV can be stressful. Stress can trigger the release of hormones that can contribute to the development of depression.

Neurological changes: HIV can cause neurological changes that can contribute to depression. For example, HIV can affect the levels of neurotransmitters in the brain, which can impact mood and emotional well-being.

Medication side effects: Some medications used to treat HIV can have side effects that contribute to depression. For example, some medications can cause fatigue or changes in appetite, which can impact mood.

Read more: https://www.testdepression.org

[blackmetalsnake]

I just watched the last episode of the Fellow Travellers.

I'm dead. Thank you.

[dittolicous]

sighs. i have had so much free time because of my cut hours but its. still left me with nothing to do, since i have to save as much money as possible while looking for another job. so i sleep, wake up, look to see if there are any new job postings on indeed/linkedin/ziprecruit/monster/etc, dig farther into google for more sketchy job openings, think about what company sites i can check for direct jobs, check those sketchy 'surveys for money' sites,... and then i go back to sleep. because well. cant be hungry or waste money if ur asleep.

i just. im miserable. i have so much time but i cant even enjoy or use it because im going to start bleeding money i dont have soon. im fucking terrified of not being able to find a new job, of being stuck in this... dead end job. unable to get off this damn island. it makes me sick. so im bored and guilty and scared and i just gucking hate this!

im so fuckibg tired of living in this godforsaken world where you only deserve to live if you give up everything. honestly, i wish someone would just. fuckibg come beat me up. wish my parents had actually fucking hit me instead of just yelling and insults. wish i was missing limbs or brain fuction or just. anything. anything to get the world to see i cant function.

im an empty brained idiot. i dont have any passion or self. how am i suppose to live? id rather be a fucking shattered glass than an empty jar. but thats what i am.

god i just. how???? how????? how do people... live????? how do you create and make.... your brand or personality? i cant make any of that. im just here. breathing. not for any reason. thats how its always been. everytime i see jokes about what kind of 'weird kid' you were i want to cry. because ive never been fucking anything! i wasnt a horse girl or a cat girl or train person or dinosaur nut or a monster fan and never cared about Egypt or rome or didnt care for legos or cars or model building or WHATEVER. ive just! been here! with nothing! im not ANYTHING. i dont have hobbys. ive nev r had hobbies.

ive always been alone and empty. disconnected from the world. disconnected from the community. disconnected from everyone.

my life is nothing. has been nothing. just a waste of time and space. nothing to show but misery and anger. theres no escaping it. i wish i was an actual person instead of this empty sack of nothing.

get hobbies they say, thatll help, yeah surs. sure. hobbies. to store in my roach and rat infested house, where i hide away in a tiny room because its the only space i have that i can control. with the money that i dont have. alone. because im terrible at bonding with people. because why would any human wanna hang around me? and because i tire so fucking fast.

i just. i wish i was fucking dead. im tired of this stupid fucking world. thinking things might get bettrr jusy to have reality forced into my face. im a piece of garbage npc who would have been better never being born.

[firefly-fez]

Say what you will about our universe, at least we live in a world where mosquitos can't transmit HIV.

[millionmovieproject]

NEW EPISODE ALERT!

In this episode of Social Contract, Jared and Nicolette are in holiday mode, and spend a good portion of the show giggling about egg nog and clear pumpkin pie. China's development of eco-friendly, high yield iron and steel production, a cure for HIV, Luigi, CNN faking stories, and other things are also discussed.

[uncanny-tranny]

This is completely on-topic, and I imagine that Hodson from the above tweet would be very encouraged that the younger generation looks to people like him as inspirational mentors for living a queer life beyond the age we are "supposed" to live to.

Too many of us were taken too soon. We remember them, and we also remember that queerness can't be erased. A future for you, for your community, for your livelihoods is all possible, and there is hope that you will live - that despite everything, it's still you. It's important to highlight grief and hope that we have.

Not a day goes by where I do not think about the advent of medicine like PrEP and wonder just what the people - especially queer people - who passed from HIV/AIDs during the AIDs crisis would think

And then, I read this survivor's testimony and it just makes me emotional. I think this is the closest answer we have. HIV has changed, and we must always remember the people who didn't see that change before it happened.

[starlightseraph]

house md will always be remebered as the most insane thing ever broadcast because of how unabashedly feral everyone involved was.

a short collection of things that happen on the show, just off the top of my head, not even scratching the surface:

- house shoots a random dead body in the morgue and then sticks him in an mri machine, which pulls the bullet out of the dead guy’s head and destroys the machine, costing the hospital millions

- foreman gets bitten by a person with rabies

- chase kills an african dictator

- cameron steals drugs from a patient after possibly getting hiv from said patient

- house induces a migraine and then takes a drug made by his arch nemesis (who he’s been stalking for 25 years) to get the drug taken off the market. he then takes lsd (in the hospital, in the middle of a case) to cure the migraine.

- chase goes into anaphylaxis after doing body shots

- house stops an elevator so he can perform a cavity (vaginal) search on a teenage heart transplant patient who’s in cardiorespiratory arrest

- they give a neurosurgeon mushrooms to cure his food poisoning, then they stick him in an operating room. the neurosurgeon strips in front of a health board assessor.

- kutner dies for gay marriage

- house sets an autopsy room on fire while trying to juggle flaming bottles

- house gets recruited by the cia

- taub gets held at gun point after diagnosing a stripper with skin cancer

- in almost every single episode, the team breaks into multiple houses

- house fakes terminal brain cancer so he can get drugs implanted directly into the pleasure centre of his brain

- house cons us immigration to get his fake wife a green card. he also uses his fake wife’s ukrainian food truck to spy on people

- house tries to get wilson, his closet case boybestfriend, into bed every few episodes. every other sentence out of house’s mouth is about wanting to rail wilson.

- taub has a kid with his ex-wife, after they divorce, at the same time he has a kid with his 25 yo side piece. the kids’ names are sophie and sophia.

- house and wilson have a bet on who can hide a chicken in the hospital the longest without anyone finding out

- house tries to kill himself like 6 times and always fails (insulin shock, overdoses, electrocution, jumping off a building, cutting, etc)

- house fakes his death to get out of a prison sentence after violating his parole so he can live out his bi love story with his gay best friend who has 5 months to live

[worldaidsday]

2024 World AIDS Day report — Take the rights path - Press Conference.

Press conference by Angeli Achrekar, Deputy Executive Director of the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), on the launch of the 2024 World AIDS Day report: Take the rights path.

Watch the 2024 World AIDS Day report — Take the rights path - Press Conference!

[liminalweirdo]

"We all deserve the right to protect and keep ourselves safe. Implementing a mask ban is not only an infringement on our human rights but also extremely ableist and inconsiderate of those disabled or immunocompromised.

. . .

About 1 in 5 adult New Yorkers have a disability. If a mask ban were to be implemented, spaces such as stores and restaurants might ban masking or set up mask-removal policy. That’s 1 in 5 adults no longer able to shop in public along with others, or participate in gatherings.

Forcing immunocompromised people to remove their face masks would likely violate the federal Americans with Disabilities Act and the New York State Human Rights Law. As a member of ACT UP NY, it’s always my goal to fight for human rights such as healthcare.

Those that are HIV+ are 8% more likely to be hospitalized due to COVlD than those that aren’t and are also at an increased risk of developing Long COVlD.

Masking SAVES LIVES. Masking is community care.”

Behind the Powecom KN95 is Serita @_seritasargent_ and her friend Bri’anna @lanoirede.jpg holding the #StopMaskBans sign.

MaskTogetherAmerica encourages everyone to speak up and write to elected officials to demand they oppose the anti-mask bills S9867/A10057 and S9194! We need to defend our right to masks.

[kerri-but-horny]

I just cranked my hog to something that was probably bugchaser crap. I want to jump into a spike pit.

[grison-in-space]

from the number of asinine complaints about how "voting is NOT a form of harm reduction" because harm reduction is for ADDICTS! ONLY! I'm seeing around... all coming from OP blogs I don't recognize and which otherwise don't have much presence... well, that coordination alongside the timing of US politics sure feels like the Russian troll bots agitating again. (Yes, they absolutely infested Tumblr; I think @ms-demeanor had a great post about what the bots looked and felt like somewhere that I will have to try and track down tomorrow.)

The thing is, if you actually do know harm reduction well, the complaint makes no sense. It's not as if the origin of harm reduction is a secret or especially hard to find out more about. I am not exactly an expert in the field: I have a educated layperson's interest in public health and infectious disease, I'm a queer feminist of a certain age and therefore have a certain degree of familiarity with AIDS-driven safer sex campaigns, and I'm interested in disability history and self advocacy (and I would in fact clarify harm reduction as a philosophy under this umbrella). So I have about twenty years of experience with harm reduction as a philosophy basically by existing in communities whose history is intertwined with harm reduction, which means I know it well from many different angles, and I know how the story of the philosophy is generally taught.

See, this is a story that starts, as so many stories do, in the 1980s with something monstrous President Reagan was doing. In this case, it was the AIDS epidemic, and Reagan refusing to devote any money or time to what eventually became called AIDS (rather than the original GRIDS, which came with its own baked in homophobia). Knowing themselves abandoned by society in this as in all things, and watching as friends and loved ones died in droves, queers and addicts are two communities who see that they are the only resources that they collectively have to save each other's lives. Queers know that sex, even casual sex, is an important part of people's lives and culture... and people aren't going to stop doing it even if there's a disease, so how can it happen safely? Condoms. Condoms every time, freely available, easy and shameless, shower them on people in the street if you have to. (And other things: this is the origin of the concept of "fluid bonding", for example... both of which were concepts that were immediately adopted in response to COVID, like outdoor socially distsnced greetings and masks and "bubbles." That wasn't an accident. Normalizing sexual health tests and seeing hard results on paper before sex was a thing, too.)

Addicts, too, knew that using was going to happen no matter how earnestly people tried to stop. If it was that easy, addiction wouldn't exist. So: how do you make using safer for longer? If you could stop someone getting HIV before they could bring themselves to get clean, that's a whole life right there. If you could stop someone overdosing once, twice, a dozen times, that's more time you're buying them to claw themselves out of addiction and into a better place. Addicts see, right, needle sharing is getting the diseases spread, so cut down on needle sharing. Well, needles aren't easy to get hold of. Their supply is controlled because people who aren't prescribed needles are theoretically junkies, so taking the needles away makes it harder to use, right— and no one is complicit, and also you see fewer discarded needles lying around where they're unsanitary and unsafe, right? Except that people want to do a buddy a good turn, so they share if there's no other option, and they'll keep a needle going until it's literally too blunt to keep using if need be. So fighting needle sharing means making it easier to get needles to shoot up with: finding a place to discard used ones and get as many fresh ones as you need to use safely!

Making free needles available to junkies and free condoms for the bathhouses was not a popular solution with politicians, for perhaps obvious reasons. Nor was routine testing of the blood supply, because that cost money too. But these things work to stop the spread of disease. Thus the principle of harm reduction: policy interventions in response to communities that frequently engage in risky behavior should focus on whatever reduces aggregate harm by reducing the risk rather than by trying to reduce the behavior. The homos and junkies say look, all your societal judgement in the world hasn't stopped us being homos and junkies yet. You ain't going to look after us? We'll look after our own. And this is the form that takes. Not increasing the pressure to act like people who aren't is, but making it safer to be the people we are while we try to be the happiest versions of ourselves. Even if that means being morally complicit in a whole lot of casual sex and drug abuse.

The thing is, harm reduction is a philosophy rooted in the defiance of people who knew that their society thought they deserved to die painfully, young, invisible and alone. This is not the kind of thing that people come up with and get mad if you adapt it and share it, especially if you tell the story of where it came from. And importantly, harm reduction is not purely the child of addiction: that philosophy, from the get go, was cooked up to apply both to substance abuse and casual sex. It didn't just spread from addiction care; it was born straddling addiction care and queer & feminist health care.

So it doesn't make sense to see actual activists who know harm reduction well complaining that this is a term exhibiting semantic drift when we talk about voting as harm reduction. It's actually a good metaphor: you're reducing the overall risk of the worst case scenario metaphors by voting Democrat, at least until future votes can install a system where multiple parties can flourish on the political scheme. (Democrats and Republicans are essentially coalitions of a pack of arguing factions anyway, and those factions are essentially what would be classed elsewhere as a party in its own right; the US essentially just lumps political granularity rather than splitting it in our political system.) And anyone who understands harm reduction itself knows that.

So it's this wildly inorganic complaint being voiced repeatedly by different sources. Sounds like a pretty good flag for a potential psyop to me.

If you want to learn more about harm reduction and its history, especially from an addiction perspective, I cannot recommend Maia Szalavitz's Undoing Drugs: How Harm Reduction is Changing the Future of Drugs and Addiction (2022) highly enough. Szalavitz has a history of addiction of her own as well as being a clear and accessible writer with an excellent grasp of neuroscience and history. I have a lot of respect for her work.

[genderqueerdykes]

genuine piece of advice for punks, activists, and everyone else honestly: any form of leftist infighting is a waste of your time.

focus on the task at hand: improving living and quality of life conditions for your community. unionize. donate to food banks. cooperate with organizations like food not bombs to distribute free hot meals. volunteer at libraries. participate in homeless outreach. give people access to resources in your community. organize and participate in protests. create organizations, groups, and gathering spots for queer folk in your area who need safe places to go and find community.

help people find access to HRT, surgery and other gender affirming care. carry, hand out, and administer narcan (naloxone). help recovering people get to rehabilitation, methadone clinics and so on. help addicted people practice harm reduction and use safely. help give out menstrual kits to homeless and low income people who have periods. help people get into housing programs. help disabled people apply for disability (SSI and SSDI) and disability lawyers. help disabled people find work or income resources that are accessible to them. donate blood and/or plasma if you can. care for people with HIV and AIDS.

help people apply for food stamps, medicaid, bill and rent assistance. help disabled people find case managers and caregivers. call local lawmakers to voice your opinions on current events. advocate for disadvantaged queers in your area. establish and participate in mutual aid funds. spread awareness and advocate online. write about and share your experiences with disadvantages, abuse and other problems you've faced in life for who you are. gather and organize with people with shared experiences. start or volunteer at a community garden. deliver meals to the elderly. volunteer at a homeless shelter.

organize fundraisers for, spread awareness of, and donate to:

Palestine

Sudan

Congo

i don't care if someone's activism looks different from yours: there are a TON of ways to improve and make change in your and the global community. doing ONE of these is enough, finding a singular way to improve your community is a better use of your time than arguing. everyone can find ways to be good to each other.

rehashing the same talking points, reading between the lines, accusing someone of identifying with politics they've never advocated for, and making baseless accusations isn't helping. it's not fixing anything. mobilize. advocate. stand up for your community and its rights. take action. now. i mean it. we must.

help each other.

[alostwanderernotfound]

HIV and COVID

A major barrier to preventing the spread of HIV is accurate test results.

There is a high chance there are many people with HIV that have it and do not know. We do not know how long this undetected time period is (lentiviruses are often associated with long periods of time of virus activity that goes undetected- 5 to 10 years or more), but there is a chance many individuals with HIV go undiagnosed for many years. Individuals during this time before an HIV diagnosis complain of fatigue and many undiagnosed disabling symptoms during that time period. HIV is able to cause changes to immune cells that prevent HIV tests from finding the infection. Some people get negative HIV tests when they are HIV positive. This means you could be HIV negative, but still have HIV in your blood and can spread HIV to other individuals.

Getting a COVID vaccination (and sometimes other vaccinations like the flu vaccination) can help the body identify HIV hiding in the body. This allows earlier treatment and intervention. Once HIV has been identified, it also reduces the risk for all individuals in our population to be exposed to more severe infections.

Getting tested regularly for HIV used to be part of our federal public health recommendations.

This just further emphasizes why this information is so important to know and healthcare needs to start testing for more diseases in more people and do these tests more often.

People often assume their infection came from an unfaithful partner, but in reality HIV has been spreading unknowingly to many in the medical community and still in the public sphere no one is talking about it like the huge deal it is.

This potential means people could be raped as a child, never have sex again, never encounter drugs, and then be miserable & living with an active HIV infection into their early 20s and they would never know. Once they got a positive test result they would have no idea where the infection even came from.

Our entire understanding of these types of diseases has to change and the seriousness of this topic has to be addressed by the world. This was theorized as a mechanism of HIV spread due to how many people were getting diagnosed but had no identifiable cause of their HIV, but now it’s proven and right in front of us. This is disastrous.

To everyone that told the truth about how they didn’t know how they got these types of diseases & how they had no idea where they got it from then faced judgement from others and even the medical community- you aren’t crazy.

On behalf of everything these types of diseases did to destroy families, relationships, and your body, I’m going to apologize right now for all the individuals that I know won’t ever give you an apology for what they did and what they said.

I believe you. I always did.

Without you telling your truth , we never would have been able to figure this out about HIV.

HIV is spreading in “HIV negative” individuals to other individuals as some researchers theorized.

The mRNA vaccination technology developed is now the foundation for the next generation of HIV treatment and disease control. We must continue to push and advocate for improving the lives of all people with disease and we all just took a huge step forward.

You do not have to be sexually active to develop HIV. Your sexual trauma doesn’t have to define your life for the rest of your life- you are stronger than you know and braver than you feel.

Find a place to get tested for HIV here:

I still recommend getting a NAT or “viral load” test done as the first test to see if you have HIV.

I think considering what we know about HIV and in consideration of all the things we still don’t know that this is the safest option. Any other test for this condition available today has too high of a chance of producing a wrong result. I find it extremely uncomfortable we still use the other types of tests in the hospital and doctor office settings.

If you choose to order a test through an online service be aware some tests only tell you about either HIV-1 or HIV-2 and will not always provide you information related to type 1 and type 2.

For example, here:

This will provide you information related to ordering a test that looks for both types of HIV instead of just one strain of HIV.

Stay safe.

[doberbutts]

Curious about something you mentioned in your post last week, you said that in your opinion all drugs should be legal and I’m curious about how that would be a positive at all? Like I get weed bc it’s pretty harmless but when I think of drugs I think of cocaine and heroin, which have destroyed so many lives. If it was widely available wouldn’t that end up hurting more people than helping? That’s just my opinion but I’m curious on the other side

I do think all drugs should be legal. This is said knowing that addiction runs in my family and that the only reason my older sister is my *sister* is due to drug use and addiction. Otherwise she'd be my cousin.

Making drugs illegal does not stop people from getting high. It does not stop drug related crime. And it certainly does not stop drugs from tearing families apart.

Addiction is a symptom of a larger problem. Solve the problem and the addict problem goes away. Solve the addict problem and drugs stop ruining lives and destroying families and creating massive amounts of drug related violence. Places that have roled out decriminalization strategies effectively have seen an overall reduction in crime rates across the board, a reduction in recreational drug use, and a reduction in bloodborne illness like HIV. Creating safe needle exchanges as well as safe places to get high with medical staff onhand has also created a locale where very few people die from overdose.

Most people hear "decriminalize all drugs" and think I mean a free-for-all. I don't. I think the drug market should be regulated. I don't think you should be able to get ketamine or heroin over the counter at a walmart like you can get asprin. But I think it's time to stop putting people in jail for getting high.

My aunt tore her life and her family and her health apart for years while she was addicted to heroin. My sister, her daughter, needed to be removed from her care due to the amazingly bad choices she made as a mother due to her addiction and her prioritizing drugs over the health and safety of her daughter. My aunt has had multiple heart attacks from the damage the constant drug use did to her body.

My aunt is more than a decade sober and do you know why? It's not because she got a wakeup call when her daughter was taken away, because at the time she willingly and freely signed her over to my parents because that got her "out of [her] hair". It's not because she had a heart attack, because she went right back to it the moment she was out of the hospital. It's not even because she spent time in rehab and prison, because the moment she was out she was using again.

No, my aunt got sober because her life changed. She was put on a better pain management plan. She got out of her shitty marriage to her shitty husband. She completed some education to make her more hireable so she didn't have to rely on less than safe means of paying her bills. She reconnected with my sister and reforged their relationship once she was 18. She bought her own house. She found love with someone who didn't give a shit about her past and brought out the best in her.

My aunt was a deeply unhappy person. Heroin made life more tolerable for her. Until she couldn't tolerate life without it. Until she'd do anything, anything, to get her next high.

A lot of addicts are addicts because they are self-medicating for something else and their drug of choice has chemical properties that makes their brains crave it more. If you fix the "deeply unhappy" part, you create a healthier environment for that addict to take control over their life again. Without it, they are far more likely to continue to relapse.

Knowing this, why would I then want to add the threat of prison and jailtime- life-ruining things themselves- to an addict's list of concerns?

Look up rat park sometime. In the rat paradise, drugged water was freely offered, and occasional a rat here or there would take a hit or two, but rarely enough to even get high and almost never habitually. Addiction literally didn't exist even though the rats were taking addictive substances. But the rats in cages, seperated from each other, with no enrichment, crammed into small spaces and stressed to hell? Those rats took hit after hit after hit until they overdosed and died. The addict rats were deeply unhappy. The drugs were their only escape. The paradise rats had to be lured in with sweetened drugs to even consider and even then they rejected them. The caged rats did not need sweetner, even though the drugs made the water bitter.

If we can see such a stark difference in rats having their needs met vs rats experiencing isolation and stress, what would happen if we showed human addicts the same consideration?

I think a lot better results than continuing to jail deeply unhappy and desperate people for doing the only thing they can think of to cope.

[reasonsforhope]

"Since it was first identified in 1983, HIV has infected more than 85 million people and caused some 40 million deaths worldwide.

While medication known as pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP, can significantly reduce the risk of getting HIV, it has to be taken every day to be effective. A vaccine to provide lasting protection has eluded researchers for decades. Now, there may finally be a viable strategy for making one.

An experimental vaccine developed at Duke University triggered an elusive type of broadly neutralizing antibody in a small group of people enrolled in a 2019 clinical trial. The findings were published today [May 17, 2024] in the scientific journal Cell.

“This is one of the most pivotal studies in the HIV vaccine field to date,” says Glenda Gray, an HIV expert and the president and CEO of the South African Medical Research Council, who was not involved in the study.

A few years ago, a team from Scripps Research and the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI) showed that it was possible to stimulate the precursor cells needed to make these rare antibodies in people. The Duke study goes a step further to generate these antibodies, albeit at low levels.

“This is a scientific feat and gives the field great hope that one can construct an HIV vaccine regimen that directs the immune response along a path that is required for protection,” Gray says.

-via WIRED, May 17, 2024. Article continues below.

Vaccines work by training the immune system to recognize a virus or other pathogen. They introduce something that looks like the virus—a piece of it, for example, or a weakened version of it—and by doing so, spur the body’s B cells into producing protective antibodies against it. Those antibodies stick around so that when a person later encounters the real virus, the immune system remembers and is poised to attack.

While researchers were able to produce Covid-19 vaccines in a matter of months, creating a vaccine against HIV has proven much more challenging. The problem is the unique nature of the virus. HIV mutates rapidly, meaning it can quickly outmaneuver immune defenses. It also integrates into the human genome within a few days of exposure, hiding out from the immune system.

“Parts of the virus look like our own cells, and we don’t like to make antibodies against our own selves,” says Barton Haynes, director of the Duke Human Vaccine Institute and one of the authors on the paper.

The particular antibodies that researchers are interested in are known as broadly neutralizing antibodies, which can recognize and block different versions of the virus. Because of HIV’s shape-shifting nature, there are two main types of HIV and each has several strains. An effective vaccine will need to target many of them.

Some HIV-infected individuals generate broadly neutralizing antibodies, although it often takes years of living with HIV to do so, Haynes says. Even then, people don’t make enough of them to fight off the virus. These special antibodies are made by unusual B cells that are loaded with mutations they’ve acquired over time in reaction to the virus changing inside the body. “These are weird antibodies,” Haynes says. “The body doesn’t make them easily.”

Haynes and his colleagues aimed to speed up that process in healthy, HIV-negative people. Their vaccine uses synthetic molecules that mimic a part of HIV’s outer coat, or envelope, called the membrane proximal external region. This area remains stable even as the virus mutates. Antibodies against this region can block many circulating strains of HIV.

The trial enrolled 20 healthy participants who were HIV-negative. Of those, 15 people received two of four planned doses of the investigational vaccine, and five received three doses. The trial was halted when one participant experienced an allergic reaction that was not life-threatening. The team found that the reaction was likely due to an additive in the vaccine, which they plan to remove in future testing.

Still, they found that two doses of the vaccine were enough to induce low levels of broadly neutralizing antibodies within a few weeks. Notably, B cells seemed to remain in a state of development to allow them to continue acquiring mutations, so they could evolve along with the virus. Researchers tested the antibodies on HIV samples in the lab and found that they were able to neutralize between 15 and 35 percent of them.

Jeffrey Laurence, a scientific consultant at the Foundation for AIDS Research (amfAR) and a professor of medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College, says the findings represent a step forward, but that challenges remain. “It outlines a path for vaccine development, but there’s a lot of work that needs to be done,” he says.

For one, he says, a vaccine would need to generate antibody levels that are significantly higher and able to neutralize with greater efficacy. He also says a one-dose vaccine would be ideal. “If you’re ever going to have a vaccine that’s helpful to the world, you’re going to need one dose,” he says.

Targeting more regions of the virus envelope could produce a more robust response. Haynes says the next step is designing a vaccine with at least three components, all aimed at distinct regions of the virus. The goal is to guide the B cells to become much stronger neutralizers, Haynes says. “We’re going to move forward and build on what we have learned.”

-via WIRED, May 17, 2024