The International AIDS Vaccine Initiative is a global nonprofit organization comprising three consortia of HIV/AIDS researchers: the Neutralizing Antibody Consortium (NAC), the HIV Live-attenuated Consortium, and the Vectors Consortium. The mission of the Initiative according to the IAVI website is…
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Our traditional antibiotics are becoming less effective at fighting bacterial infections because they are evolving and becoming resistant. Bacteria multiply at very high rates which means that any mutations that occur, can be replicated in a very short space of…
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Parasitic diseases are infections which are caused and transmitted by parasites. Parasites often target vital organs and systems, altering the normal functions of the body. Thus, parasites play the role of a transmitter of some of medical science’s most lethal…
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Influenza is one of the most pesky and occasionally frightening of common human viruses: it is more harmful than the common cold, yet mutates and combines to form new viruses very quickly, so that one cannot simply escape it through…
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Hypertension (HTN), commonly known as high blood pressure, induces pathological changes throughout the cardiovascular system, particularly in the body’s arteries. One reason that arteries suffer a disproportionate amount of damage stems from the basic anatomy of the human circulatory system….
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The introduction of Highly Active Antiretroviral Therapy (HAART), which meant prescribing multiple anti-HIV drugs at once rather than in sequence, was initially groundbreaking. Unfortunately, even with HAART, HIV-positive persons can and do still experience resistance to drugs eventually, and there…
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Why is there a flu season? It’s a surprisingly difficult question to answer. In most cases, the traditional and somewhat superstitious equations between viral infections and weather turn out not to hold water – for example, you catch cold from…
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HAART, or Highly Active Antiretroviral Therapy, is currently the standard approach to treating HIV infections. Although there is still no cure for HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, HAART is the accepted method for delaying and hopefully stalling the progression…
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I recall a commercial from a couple of decades ago that warned us that “It’s not nice to fool Mother Nature!” I would like to add to that catch phrase, and issue an even more dangerous warning when I say,…
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Both bacteria and viruses can cause disease. However, these two types of infectious agents achieve their pathogenicity in different ways. Infection itself simply means that a pathogen has entered the body, but does not necessarily equate with disease, since a…
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