#aids

[anticensorshipumbreon]

GRID (Gay - Related Immune Deficiency) related idea part 2?

https://www.nytimes.com/1982/05/11/science/new-homosexual-disorder-worries-health-officials.html

[magicfemme]

“Still loved."

AIDS QUILT SERIES | VIEW THE QUILT

[pandemic-info]

Referred to as "the Dusseldorf patient" to protect his privacy, researchers said he is the fifth confirmed case of an HIV cure. Although the details of his successful treatment were first announced at a conference in 2019, researchers could not confirm he had been officially cured at that time.

Today, researchers announced the Dusseldorf patient still has no detectable virus in his body, even after stopping his HIV medication four years ago.

[scopophilic1997]

scopOphilic_micromessaging_1014 - scopOphilic1997 presents a new micro-messaging series: small, subtle, and often unintentional messages we send and receive verbally and non-verbally.

[lgbtlaughs]

ACT UP, 1990

[frogosaurus]

Happy Pride month to all the gay folks who should still be with us but were lost to AIDS. So many of them had (and continue to have) huge impacts on the world, despite their lives being tragically cut short.

Since this is primarily a Muppet blog, I wanted to take a moment to talk about Richard Hunt.

Richard Hunt was a gay man and a fantastic puppeteer who started working with Jim Henson, Frank Oz, Jerry Nelson, and company in 1970 at age eighteen and joined the cast of Sesame Street two years later. While working with the Muppets, he originated the characters of Scooter, Beaker, Statler, Sweetums, and Wayne, but also became the primary performer of Janice and is responsible for the flower child personality she is now known for. He was also known to be a fantastic singer.

But maybe most importantly, he made so many people happy. According the book "Of Muppets and Men" by Christopher Finch, Hunt "seems to get more unadulterated pleasure from performing than anyone else in the organization. When he is not working on camera, he is apt to have Scooter or Beaker or Janice -- anyone -- on his arm for the purpose of entertaining... He makes the crew laugh, jokes with the guest star, clowns for the shop personnel. He is one of the chief reasons for the loose atmosphere that exists around Studio D despite the pressure and the slow pace that are endemic to television production."

Hunt died at age 41 due to AIDS complications. The Muppet Workshop made a panel for the NAMES Project AIDS quilt in his honor. The Richard Hunt Spirit Award is presented every year at the Sesame Street wrap party to the cast member that best honors Hunt's generosity and dedication on set.

Rest in peace Richard. Thank you for the laughs and the smiles, and happy Pride 💛

[batboyblog]

Peter Donde was a 10-year-old infected with H.I.V. from his mother during childbirth. But American aid kept Peter strong even as his parents died from AIDS. A program started by President George W. Bush called PEPFAR saved 26 million lives from AIDS, and one was Peter’s.

Under PEPFAR, an outreach health worker ensured that Peter and other AIDS orphans got their medicines. Then in January, Trump and Musk effectively shuttered the U.S. Agency for International Development, perhaps illegally, and that PEPFAR outreach program ended. Orphans were on their own.

Without the help of the community health worker, Peter was unable to get his medicines, so he became sick and died in late February, according to Moses Okeny Labani, a health outreach worker who helped manage care for Peter and 144 other vulnerable children.

fuck everyone who voted for Trump, and particularly fuck everyone who said it didn't matter who won, who said there was some higher point to prove by having Democrats lose, fuck everything, this ocean of blood and human suffering is all your fault and it a far and just universe you would all burn in hell for it.

[hot-patootiee]

Ughhhh

It’s Steve trying to confess his feelings to Eddie. He’s stumbling and stuttering, but Eddie interrupts him midway through.

“You’re Bisexual, Steve you have a choice. I can’t let you throw your life away for me.” Eddie whispers it solemnly, already resigned to the reality they live in.

Steve opens his mouth, but Eddie shushes him before he can get a single word out.

“I feel the same way Steve, but it’s the wrong time for this. The plague is killing people like me, maybe someday it won’t be like this, but today it is.” Eddie tears up. “I love you, and I don’t want you to die.” Eddie’s tears wind down his skin, creating rivers out of his skin. He holds Steve so close that Steve thinks Eddie might just change his mind and kiss him. But he doesn’t, he just holds him through the night.

But Steve sees it, you have to love someone so much to do something like this. To put their wellbeing over your own happiness. It was something nobody had ever done for him.

So where Eddie went, Steve forcefully followed. Eddie began playing at dive bars in Indianapolis and Steve was there.

If Eddie needed a roommate, Steve’s bags were already packed.

Eddie breaks down one night before his big audition for a record label. He screams at Steve, yelling that ‘this can’t possibly be worth it to you?’.

Steve just gathers Eddie’s body into his own and whispers assurances into his ear.

Eddie knocks the audition out of the park.

In the background, the AIDs pandemic soothes and Steve and Eddie both made it out entirely unscathed.

Finally, when Eddie’s first big tour starts, Steve goes with him. And when the last song of his first show finishes and Eddie walks off stage, Steve finally kisses him. He spends the rest of his night with Steve, who rubs long restrained I love you’s into Eddie’s skin until they both collapse in exhaustion.

It’s 8 years later when Eddie receives a Grammy that he dips his ‘husband’ on stage and kisses him.

[allthegeopolitics]

Fewer people contracted HIV last year than at any point since the rise of the disease in the late 1980s, the United Nations said Tuesday, warning that this decline was still far too slow. Around 1.3 million people contracted the disease in 2023, according to the new report from the UNAIDS agency. That is still more than three times higher than needed to reach the UN's goal of ending AIDS as a public health threat by 2030. Around 630,000 people died from AIDS-related illnesses last year, the lowest level since a peak of 2.1 million in 2004, the report said ahead of World AIDS Day on Sunday.

Continue Reading.

[bobwess]

HIV used to be a death sentence, and a fast one. Modern medication has done wonders to bringing people's life expectancy back to normal, decreasing transmission rates and risks, and even in a handful of cases completely curing the virus. There is some good news out there.

[reasonsforhope]

"A large clinical trial in South Africa and Uganda has shown that a twice-yearly injection of a new pre-exposure prophylaxis drug gives young women total protection from HIV infection.

The trial tested whether the six-month injection of lenacapavir would provide better protection against HIV infection than two other drugs, both daily pills. All three medications are pre-exposure prophylaxis (or PrEP) drugs.

Physician-scientist Linda-Gail Bekker, principal investigator for the South African part of the study, tells Nadine Dreyer what makes this breakthough so significant and what to expect next.

Tell us about the trial and what it set out to achieve

The Purpose 1 trial with 5,000 participants took place at three sites in Uganda and 25 sites in South Africa to test the efficacy of lenacapavir and two other drugs.

Lenacapavir (Len LA) is a fusion capside inhibitor. It interferes with the HIV capsid, a protein shell that protects HIV’s genetic material and enzymes needed for replication. It is administered just under the skin, once every six months.

The randomised controlled trial, sponsored by the drug developers Gilead Sciences, tested several things.

The first was whether a six-monthly injection of lenacapavir was safe and would provide better protection against HIV infection as PrEP for women between the ages of 16 and 25 years than Truvada F/TDF, a daily PrEP pill in wide use that has been available for more than a decade.

Secondly, the trial also tested whether Descovy F/TAF, a newer daily pill, was as effective as F/TDF...

The trial had three arms. Young women were randomly assigned to one of the arms in a 2:2:1 ratio (Len LA: F/TAF oral: F/TDF oral) in a double blinded fashion. This means neither the participants nor the researchers knew which treatment participants were receiving until the clinical trial was over.

In eastern and southern Africa, young women are the population who bear the brunt of new HIV infections. They also find a daily PrEP regimen challenging to maintain, for a number of social and structural reasons.

During the randomised phase of the trial none of the 2,134 women who received lenacapavir contracted HIV. There was 100 percent efficiency.

By comparison, 16 of the 1,068 women (or 1.5%) who took Truvada (F/TDF) and 39 of 2,136 (1.8%) who received Descovy (F/TAF) contracted the HIV virus...

What is the significance of these trials?

This breakthrough gives great hope that we have a proven, highly effective prevention tool to protect people from HIV.

There were 1.3 million new HIV infections globally in the past year. Although that’s fewer than the 2 million infections seen in 2010, it is clear that at this rate we are not going to meet the HIV new infection target that UNAIDS set for 2025 (fewer than 500,000 globally) or potentially even the goal to end Aids by 2030...

For young people, the daily decision to take a pill or use a condom or take a pill at the time of sexual intercourse can be very challenging.

HIV scientists and activists hope that young people may find that having to make this “prevention decision” only twice a year may reduce unpredictability and barriers.

For a young woman who struggles to get to an appointment at a clinic in a town or who can’t keep pills without facing stigma or violence, an injection just twice a year is the option that could keep her free of HIV.

What happens now?

The plan is that the Purpose 1 trial will go on but now in an “open label” phase. This means that study participants will be “unblinded”: they will be told whether they have been in the “injectable” or oral TDF or oral TAF groups.

They will be offered the choice of PrEP they would prefer as the trial continues.

A sister trial is also under way: Purpose 2 is being conducted in a number of regions including some sites in Africa among cisgender men, and transgender and nonbinary people who have sex with men.

It’s important to conduct trials among different groups because we have seen differences in effectiveness. Whether the sex is anal or vaginal is important and may have an impact on effectiveness.

How long until the drug is rolled out?

We have read in a Gilead Sciences press statement that within the next couple of months [from July 2024] the company will submit the dossier with all the results to a number of country regulators, particularly the Ugandan and South African regulators.

The World Health Organization will also review the data and may issue recommendations.

We hope then that this new drug will be adopted into WHO and country guidelines.

We also hope we may begin to see the drug being tested in more studies to understand better how to incorporate it into real world settings.

Price is a critical factor to ensure access and distribution in the public sector where it is badly needed.

Gilead Sciences has said it will offer licences to companies that make generic drugs, which is another critical way to get prices down.

In an ideal world, governments will be able to purchase this affordably and it will be offered to all who want it and need protection against HIV."

-via The Conversation, July 3, 2024

[oneinchbarrier]

[cypherheartnokey]

And so it begins

[our-queer-experience]

bro…

[mindblowingscience]

Researchers have discovered that Daphne pseudomezereum (commonly known as Onishibari) contains a substance inhibiting replication of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). The plants were cultivated at the Medicinal Plant Garden of the Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Toho University. This finding is expected to lead to the discovery of drug seeds for novel drugs with superior anti-HIV activity. A paper reporting this study was published in the journal Phytochemistry. The research group was led by Professor Wei Li from the Department of Pharmacognosy, Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Toho University, in collaboration with the Duke University Medical Center in the United States. The Thymelaeaceae family consists of over 53 genera and 800 species distributed worldwide, except in polar and desert regions. These plants contain diterpenoids, which exhibit significant biological activities, including anticancer, anti-HIV, and analgesic effects.

Continue Reading.