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In 2008, a Black man from Louisiana was charged with a felony for intentional “exposure to AIDS,” despite not having it. Instead, the man was diagnosed with HIV and had been receiving consistent medical care since. In 2010, an HIV-positive protester in Maryland was given five years in prison for second-degree assault because he spit on a police officer. From 2008 to 2013, at least 180 people living with HIV (PLHIV) were arrested or charged under HIV criminalization laws.

For two decades, the dominant idea in HIV research has been that antiretroviral therapy effectively wipes out active viruses that cause devastating infections but leaves behind a reservoir of infected cells seemingly invisible to the immune system — until treatment is stopped. Then the virus comes roaring back. Now two new studies reveal that the virus continues to put the immune system through a workout. Some infected cells churn out bits of viral RNA and protein that elicit an immune response, researchers report in the Sept. 13 Cell Host & Microbe. While not infectious, those damaged viral particles appear to...

[H/T Grey_Whiskers]Phillip Buckhaults, a cancer genomics expert, and professor at the University of South Carolina has testified before a South Carolina Senate Medical Affairs Ad-Hoc Committee saying that Pfizer’s mRNA vaccine is contaminated with billions of tiny DNA fragments.Buckhaults, who has a PhD in biochemistry and molecular biology, said “there is a very real hazard” that these fragments of foreign DNA can insert themselves into a person’s own genome and become a “permanent fixture of the cell.”He said it’s a plausible mechanism for what might be “causing some of the rare but serious side effects like death from cardiac arrest”...

HIV substantially speeds up aging at the cellular level within the first few years after acquisition of the virus, researchers at the University of California (UCLA) report in iScience. These findings underscore the importance of early diagnosis and prompt treatment of HIV. The team observed that during the first two to three years after infection, HIV-positive men’s DNA showed evidence of aging up to five years faster than a comparable group of men who remained HIV negative. Elizabeth Crabb Breen, PhD, a professor emerita at UCLA’s Cousins Center for Psychoneuroimmunology and David Geffen School of Medicine, and her colleagues concluded...

People living with HIV who are on antiretroviral treatment and have low to moderate heart disease risk scores nevertheless had baseline cardiovascular abnormalities at a rate three times higher than people without cardiovascular disease in the general population, according to data published in the Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome. While heart disease is traditionally associated with aging, it affects people living with HIV at younger ages.

Blood donation policies for men who have sex with men (MSM) have been the subject of much attention in recent years. Throughout the world, countries are reexamining their policies; many have reduced deferral times for MSM, while others have eliminated them altogether or implemented alternative policies to address infectious disease risk. In the United Kingdom, for example, a new a new donor eligibility process was implemented this summer in which all blood donors – regardless of gender – are asked about recent sexual activity. Similarly, in Italy and Spain, MSM are no longer addressed in deferral policies; instead, the deferral...

A huge infusion of money for people living with HIV was announced today by the Department of Health and Human Services as part of its funding for the Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program. HHS will disburse $2.21 billion to cities, counties, states, and local community-based organizations in 2021; the money will fund treatment and services for hundreds of thousands of people. The 30-year-old Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program pays for HIV services for low-income Americans — or about half of all people diagnosed with HIV in the nation. “For more than three decades, HHS has driven federal efforts to end the HIV...

Rapid Aging of HIV Immune System Reported in 2011 and Earlier by Rita Effros & UCLA Researchers. But this was essentially not followed up on. Rita Effros, long-time immunologist at UCLA, and others predicted we would have this aging problem but these findings & predictions got little attention except by a few immunology & HIV researchers like Alan Landay, Joe Margolick, Keri Althoff & Seems Desai who did research & discussed these issues. It was much earlier that Rita Effros first reported (1996; https://journals.lww.com/aidsonline/Citation/1996/07000/ Shortened_telomeres_in_the_expanded_CD28_CD8__cell.1.aspx) these problems than these 2011 publications. But overall these problems & predictions were ignored. now...

Even When Well Treated, HIV Is Linked to Advanced Aging Researchers analyzed 10 biomarkers associated with biological aging among a group of HIV-positive and -negative Europeans. People living with well-treated HIV may experience faster biological aging than their HIV-negative counterparts. Publishing their findings in the journal AIDS, researchers from the ComorBidity in Relation to AIDS (COBRA) study analyzed 134 people with HIV and 79 HIV-negative people with similar sociodemographic and lifestyle factors. The participants were recruited in Amsterdam (these were at least 45 years old) and London (these were at least 50 years old). All the HIV-positive individuals were on...

‘This means we can start to look at aging as a reversible disease,’ says Prof Shai Efrati; top geriatrician says he is skeptical, and raises concernsAn Israeli doctor says he has brought about physical changes in human blood cells that “reverse” aging, using an oxygen therapy. Shai Efrati reported in a peer-reviewed journal article published on November 18 that his research team’s 60-day therapy lengthened telomeres, the structures found at the ends of chromosomes, on average by more than a fifth. He claims this represents a “holy grail” in the battle against aging. However, some other physicians have reservations,...

Study suggests adults infected with the virus can develop age-related diseases a decade earlier than their uninfected peers. People undergoing treatment for HIV-1 have an increased risk for earlier onset of age-related illnesses such as some cancers, renal and kidney disease, frailty, osteoporosis and neurocognitive disease. But is it because of the virus that causes AIDS or the treatment?

STUDY: People With HIV Age 14 Years Faster New study shows evidence HIV accelerates age-related diseases. HIV positive patients may be living longer, but they may also be aging faster than expected. A new study published today in PLOS One shows that HIV-positive people are at an increased risk of age-related diseases such as some cancers, frailty, osteoporosis, kidney disease, and neurocognitive disease. Researchers think that it is the HIV itself that accelerates the aging process by 14 years, rather than medications used to treat it. Scientists from the UCLA AIDS Institute and Center for AIDS Research and the Multi-Center...

People living with HIV in Canada had eight times the risk of Alzheimer’s disease and other non-AIDS-related dementia as their HIV-negative counterparts, and they were diagnosed 12.5 years earlier, according to an analysis published in BMJ Open. They also had higher rates of several other age-related chronic conditions. That rates of age-related illnesses were higher among people living with HIV wasn’t a surprise, as that’s been seen in other studies. Antiretroviral treatment has been associated with kidney damage and cardiovascular disease, and viral hepatitis and alcohol use—both common among HIV-positive people—can cause liver disease.

[Subject Line]: A new simulation suggests that by 2030, multimorbidity in people with HIV will rise substantially. Good health for people aging with HIV will require health care providers to target diabetes, heart disease, anxiety and chronic kidney disease management to this population, especially HIV-positive gay and bisexual men and Latinos. These are the projections of the ProjEcting Age, multimorbidity, and PoLypharmacy (PEARL) simulation model, presented by Parastu Kasaie, PhD, assistant scientist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, at the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI).