Soon after an individual becomes infected with HIV the virus infects cells in the brain and spinal cord (the central nervous system [CNS]). Although this causes no immediate problems, during the late-stages of disease it can cause dementia and encephalitis (acute inflammation of the brain that can cause death).

A mapmaker and a mathematician may seem like an unlikely duo, but together they worked out a way to measure longitude – and kept millions of sailors from getting lost at sea. Now, another unlikely duo, a virologist and a biophysicist at Rockefeller University, is making history of their own.

By identifying a protein that restricts the release of HIV-1 virus from human cells, scientists believe they may be closer to identifying new approaches to treatment. The research is published in the advance online edition of Nature Medicine.

On the 25th anniversary of the first scientific article linking a retrovirus to AIDS, Anthony S. Fauci, M.D., director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, part of the National Institutes of Health, reflects in an essay in Nature on his experience treating and studying HIV/AIDS for the past quarter century.

According to a new policy analysis led by researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) and the University of California, Berkeley, the most common HIV prevention strategies—condom promotion, HIV testing, treatment of other sexually transmitted infections (STIs), vaccine and microbicide research, and abstinence—are having a limited impact on the predominantly heterosexual epidemics found in Africa.

Using ingenious molecular espionage, scientists have found how a single key enzyme, seemingly the Swiss army knife in HIV's toolbox, differentiates and dynamically binds both DNA and RNA as part of the virus' fierce attack on host cells. The work is described this week in the journal Nature.

Any hunter will tell you that when your quarry goes into hiding, you have to flush it out to get a good shot at it. Such is the case with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.

More than two million children worldwide were living with the HIV virus in 2007, most of whom were infected before they were born, a joint study by United Nations humanitarian organisations has said.

Scientists have known for more than a decade that a protein associated with the HIV virus is good at crossing cell membranes, but they didn’t know how it worked. A multidisciplinary team from the University of Illinois has solved the mystery, and their findings could improve the design of therapeutic agents that cross a variety of membrane types.

Vaccines have led to many of the world’s greatest public health triumphs, but many deadly viruses, such as HIV, still elude the best efforts of scientists to develop effective vaccines against them.

A plentiful ingredient found in human semen drastically enhances the ability of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) to cause infection, according to a report in the December 14, 2007, issue of the journal Cell, a publication of Cell Press.

A mutation in a little-studied structural region of the AIDS virus can cause resistance to several HIV drugs, according to a study published in PLoS Medicine by Gilda Tachedjian and colleagues from Australia, Canada, and the United States.