An experimental vaccine was found to promote immune responses to malaria in young children in Mali, Reuters reports. According to the news service, “The vaccine, which uses an immune system booster called an adjuvant from British drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline, targets the malaria parasite as it is actively infecting red blood cells and causing fever and illness” (Steenhuysen, 2/3).

The FDA on Monday said it’s entering into a collaboration with the nonprofit group PATH “to speed creation of a pneumococcal vaccine for children in developing nations,” United Press International reports (2/1).

Blog: Goosby Reflects On U.S. Response To Global HIV/AIDS At CROI The Infectious Diseases Center for Global Health Policy’s “Science Speaks” blog examines U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator Eric Goosby’s recent address to the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI) where he reemphasized the Obama administration’s commitment to “‘maintaining, extending…

During the closing ceremonies of the International AIDS Confernce-AIDS 2010, President Barack Obama “on Friday pledged to redouble efforts to fight HIV and AIDS through his Global Health Initiative, despite dealing with economic hard times in the wake of a global recession,” Reuters reports. According to the news service, “Obama and his Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said their focus was on a broad, sustainable and effective approach to the global epidemic” (Kelland, 7/23).

Ahead of the final day of the International AIDS Conference-AIDS 2010 on Friday, a New York Times analysis piece reports that growing concerns over funding for HIV/AIDS have dominated the focus of the conference. According to the newspaper, this has affected “organizers’ efforts to get publicity for the Vienna Declaration, which calls for drug users to be spared arrest and offered clean needles, methadone and treatment if they have AIDS.”

The criminalization of men who have sex with men (MSM) and transgender people in Asia is holding back efforts to contain HIV/AIDS in the region, according to a report presented Wednesday by the U.N. Development Program (UNDP) and Asia Pacific Coalition on Male Sexual Health at the International AIDS Conference-AIDS 2010, VOA News reports. The report “linked the criminalization of homosexual behavior to an increase in the infection rate of HIV and AIDS in Asia,” the news service writes (Dewan, 7/21).

“Having HIV appears to be associated with a greater risk of death, even when the immune system is relatively robust and patients have not started treatment,” according to a study published Friday in the Lancet, MedPage Today reports (Smith, 7/15).

Ahead Of AIDS 2010, Lancet Issue Explores ARV Therapy, Gender Inequity Looking ahead to AIDS 2010 which will be held in Vienna, Austria, July 18-23, a Lancet editorial writes that 2010 marks “the deadline set by global leaders to achieve universal access to HIV prevention, treatment, and care. Sadly, the world…

In a special section in advance of the AIDS Conference, Science examines the “state of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Russia and Ukraine, which account for more than 90% of HIV infections in Eastern Europe.”

“Early treatment for HIV cuts patients’ risk of death by about 75 percent,” according to a study conducted in Haiti and published Thursday in the New England Journal of Medicine, Bloomberg Businessweek reports. The study also demonstrated that “early antiretroviral treatment reduces the likelihood of tuberculosis, a leading cause of death among HIV patients, by 50 percent,” the news service writes (Aquino, 7/14).