Science Around the Blog - 01/05/2012

In this week’s news:  HIV is a poverty-related disease in the US, a new HIV entry inhibitor is found, breastfeeding and ART lowers infant mortality in Malawi, late breakers from the prevention conference in Vancouver, and a small cell phone device helps HIV diagnostics and puts new infections on the map

• HIV and poverty: A slide show – economic status is a major predictor of HIV incidence and prevalence in the United States, with half of all new infections happening in the southern states
• Hope for a molecule that blocks HIV – Chinese scientists found a new potent virus entry inhibitor, which may work as a topical microbicide to prevent HIV transmission
• Longer breastfeeding and ART could lower HIV transmission to babies – long-term follow-up from a study in Malawi shows that early weaning increases infant mortality, making prolonged breastfeeding combined with ART the safest option
• Late breakers at the 2nd International Treatment as Prevention workshop – a summary of late-breaking abstracts from the conference in Vancouver covers home-based testing, the economic benefits of ART, and HIV services for men
• Researchers combat global disease with a cell phone, Google Maps and a lot of ingenuity – a small device automates interpretation of rapid diagnostic HIV tests and sends results to a server that helps tracking  the geographical and temporal dynamics of the HIV epidemic

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