Autum Aquino, who was born with HIV and entered the spotlight in 1991 as a first-grader at Portland's Reiche Elementary School, when she talked publicly about having AIDS, has died.

An increase in the CD163+/CD16+ monocyte subset could be a biomarker for the progression of HIV disease, according to researchers at Temple University.

Nearly half of all HIV-positive African adults who become infected with Salmonella die from what otherwise would be a seven-day bout of diarrhea. Now, UC Davis School of Medicine scientists have discovered how salmonella becomes lethal for AIDS patients. Their findings also implicate a mechanism by which HIV evades the powerful drugs used to treat AIDS.

Persons infected with a mutated HIV strain, transmitted from those who have the genetic advantages to control the virus, results in improved survival according to a recent study by South African researchers. The study, published March 21st in the open-access journal PLoS Pathogens, looked for genetic mutations in the infecting virus in 24 newly infected people in Durban, South Africa.

Impaired brain function is a prominent and still unsolved problem in AIDS. Shortly after an individual becomes infected with HIV, the virus can invade the brain and persist in this organ for life. Many HIV-infected individuals experience disturbances in memory functions and movement, which can progress to serious dementia. How the virus causes brain disease is still unclear.

A team of researchers at the University of Alberta, including a scientist at the University of Pennsylvania, have discovered a gene that is able to block HIV, and thought to in turn prevent the onset of AIDS.

Researchers at The Scripps Research Institute have developed a new two-punch strategy against HIV and they have already successfully tested aspects of it in the laboratory.

A cellular protein that helps guide immune cells to the gut has been newly identified as a target of HIV when the virus begins its assault on the body's immune system, according to researchers from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

Beneficial bacteria found in healthy women help to reduce the amount of vaginal HIV among HIV-infected women and might make it more difficult for the virus to spread, boosting the possibility that “good bacteria” might someday be tapped in the fight against HIV.

An antiretroviral drug already in widespread use in the developing world to prevent the transmission of HIV from infected mothers to their newborns during childbirth has also been found to substantially cut the risk of subsequent HIV transmission during breast-feeding.

Health and aid workers in the west African country, Guinea, say they face many challenges to help victims of HIV / AIDS, mostly because of a lack of funding and inadequate information campaigns. Nico Colombant reports from Nzerekore, Guinea, near the border with Sierra Leone.

The President’s proposed budget for fiscal year 2009, if enacted, would spell disaster for the nation’s health, and by extension, our national effort to respond to the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the United States.