The Internet is serving as a fertile medium for "HIV denialists" to spread false ideas about HIV/AIDS, which could have terrible public health consequences, say scientists in a policy paper in PLoS Medicine.

Few older women were interested in being tested for the virus that causes AIDS despite having significant risk factors for lifetime exposure, according to a study published in the July/August edition of the Journal of Women’s Health. The risk is especially great among African-American women, who represent 73 percent of new HIV cases in women over age 50.

Programmes that exclusively encourage abstinence from sex do not seem to affect the risk of HIV infection in high income countries, finds a review of the evidence in this week’s BMJ.

A study by Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) researchers of girls and women who were sex-trafficked from Nepal to India and then repatriated has found that 38 percent were HIV positive. The infection rate exceeded 60 percent among girls forced into prostitution prior to age 15 years.

A new UC Irvine study sheds light on how HIV develops into AIDS and suggests a possible way to block the deadly transformation.

Nearly 40 percent of repatriated Nepalese sex-trafficked girls and women tested were positive for HIV infection, with girls trafficked before age 15 having higher rates of infection, according to a study in the August 1 issue of JAMA, a theme issue on violence and human rights.

The Kyrgyz President's office today ordered the country's chief prosecutor and the Health Ministry to investigate whether doctors' negligence led to an outbreak of HIV among residents of Noorkat district, RFE/RL's Kyrgyz Service reported.

Researchers from Rome, Italy, describe a finding in the August 2007 print issue of The FASEB Journal that could lead to new drugs to fight the HIV/AIDS virus, as well as new vaccines to prevent infection. It has been known that HIV proteins disable the antibody-forming part of the immune system (the “homeland defense” or acquired immune system).

Current research demonstrates that the tonsils may possess the necessary factors to act as a transmission site for the spread of HIV. The related report by Moutsopoulos et al, “Tonsil Epithelial Factors May Influence Oropharyngeal Human Immunodeficiency Virus Transmission,” appears in the August issue of The American Journal of Pathology.

Hundreds of thousands of babies around the world are born each year with HIV--more than half a million in 2006 alone. Caring for these children is complicated by the fact that their immune systems are not fully developed in the first year of life, which makes them especially susceptible to rapid HIV disease progression and death.

International trials reveal that male circumcision reduces the spread of HIV/AIDS by 60 per cent. Circumcision has been practiced for thousands of years. About 30 per cent of men worldwide have had the procedure.

Three clinical trials in Africa found that adult male circumcision reduced the risk of men acquiring HIV infection from heterosexual sex by 51-60%. While adult male circumcision may also have a role to play in preventing HIV transmission in the US, say scientists at the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in a paper in PLoS Medicine, "the extent of this role on a population basis is unknown."