Active clinical trials for "HIV Infections"

The purpose of this study is to determine the efficacy and safety of vitamin D3 (cholecalciferol) supplementation on HIV progression and incidence of pulmonary tuberculosis among HIV-positive Tanzanian adult men and women initiating highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART).

Pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) is a method of preventing HIV infection through the use of antiretroviral (ARV) medications before exposure to HIV. This study will evaluate the safety and tolerability of four ARV regimens in preventing HIV infection in men who have sex with men who may be at risk of getting HIV infection through sex and women who may be at risk of getting HIV infection through sex. The four ARV regimens being evaluated are maraviroc (MVC), MVC plus emtricitabine (FTC), MVC plus tenofovir disoproxil fumarate (TDF), and TDF plus FTC. The MVC-containing arms will be compared to TDF/FTC alone and in combination.

Sub-Saharan Africa has about 10% of the world's population, but was home to more than 60% of all people living with HIV in 2003. South Africa continues to have the largest number of people living with HIV in the world, and as in other parts of sub-Saharan Africa, heterosexual exposure is the primary HIV transmission category. Worldwide, efforts to stem the spread of HIV among heterosexuals have stressed the impact of HIV on women. Oft-cited statistics indicate that about half of all people living with HIV are women. The strategies typically offered to address the impact of HIV on women are interventions with women. An alternative approach to addressing women's risk of heterosexual transmission of HIV, one that would be an important complement to the predominant approach, is focusing on men. By reducing sexual risk behavior of men, it should be possible to reduce rates of HIV in both men and women. The rates in men would decline because they are the recipients of the intervention; rates in women would decline because they have sex with men. Interventions aimed at men could take into account the power that men have in sexual decision-making and risk taking. However, whether one considers the US literature or the international literature, few randomized controlled trials of HIV/STD risk-reduction interventions have focused on heterosexual men. Accordingly, the purpose of this research is to develop and test the efficacy of an intervention to curb HIV/STD risk-associated behavior in South African men who have sex with women. A cluster-randomized controlled trial design will be used to reduce the potential for contamination between treatment arms that would be present if individuals were randomized. An attention control group will be used to control for Hawthorne effects, special attention, and group interaction. Matched pairs of neighborhoods in Black townships in Eastern Cape Province, South Africa similar on key characteristics will be created, 22 pairs will be randomly selected, and men will be recruited. One neighborhood in each pair will be randomly assigned to each of the 2 study arms. We hypothesized that men who receive a culturally appropriate theory-based HIV/STD risk-reduction intervention will be more likely to report consistently using condoms during intercourse in the 12-month post intervention period than will men who receive an attention-control intervention, adjusting for baseline condom use.

As a measure of secondary prophylaxis, and with the final objective of avoiding the infection, it has been suggested to use antiretroviral therapy. This is known as post-exposure prophylaxis (PEP). Although there are different recommendations, almost every guideline recommend using 3 drugs as PEP both in USA and Europe. Toxicity is one of the main limitations of PEP. Side effects during PEP are very usual, are attributed mainly to PI and are the main reasons for poor adherence or lost of follow-up. A current standard regimen is AZT+3TC (Combivir®) or tenofovir+emtricitabine (Truvada®) plus the PI lopinavir/r. Toxicity associated with this regimens are high (31-85% of cases),with a high tolerability, a integrase inhibitor (raltegravir)could be an adequate drug for PEP.

The HIV Vaccine Trials Network (HVTN) is doing a study to test 2 experimental HIV vaccines in combination with 2 licensed vaccines for tetanus and hepatitis B. HIV is the virus that causes AIDS. Tetanus is an infection that causes muscular spasms. Hepatitis B is a virus that can cause liver failure. About 100 people will take part in this study at multiple sites. The US National Institutes of Health (NIH) is paying for the study. We are doing this study to answer several questions. Are the HIV study vaccines safe to give to people? Are people able to take the HIV study vaccines without becoming too uncomfortable? How do people's immune systems respond to the HIV study vaccines? (Your immune system protects you from disease.) Can people's immune responses to a tetanus or hepatitis B vaccines help us understand how their immune systems might respond to the HIV study vaccines? Is there a common immune response to licensed vaccines like the tetanus and hepatitis B vaccines?

Safety and efficacy are key issues in antiretroviral therapy (ART) selection. Efavirenz (EFV) is an important component of combination ART in treatment naive individuals. Like many drugs, there are inter-individual differences in the efficacy and tolerability of EFV. The Encore1 study provides an opportunity to examine the pharmacokinetics (PK)(processes by which a drug is absorbed, distributed, metabolized, and eliminated by the body) of EFV in blood samples collected over a 24-hour dosing interval in participants receiving either standard 600 mg or reduced 400 mg dose EFV once daily.

IPM 018 is a double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled study conducted at one site in Belgium among 24 healthy, HIV-negative women to evaluate dapivirine release for 28 days from matrix and reservoir intravaginal rings, each containing 25 mg of dapivirine, and to assess safety and tolerability compared to placebo

There has not been a great deal of research involving Haitian American adolescents and HIV risk reduction. The purpose of the study is to learn better ways to teach teenagers about living healthy by educating these children about how to make good choices about things like eating healthy, exercise, and sexual behavior. The primary focus of the proposed study is to understand the mechanisms of adopting safer sex practices among Haitian American (H-A) adolescents. We will enroll 160 male and 160 female participants to achieve the target sample of 272 participants at the 12-month follow-up time point.

In HIV infected patients, individuals exposed to the virus of Hepatitis B are more susceptible to develop a chronic and severe liver disease with a major risk of cirrhosis and liver cancer. However, the existing protocol of vaccination against Hepatitis B is less efficient in HIV-infected patients than in non HIV-infected-patients, and, in case of response, its longevity has to be followed up carefully. This study compares the efficacy of the standard protocol vaccination with GenHevac-B and 2 other protocols, a double-dose of GenHevac-B and a set of intradermal injections of Genhevac-B, in HIV-infected patients with lymphocytes T CD4 level above 200 permm3.

Project POWER will test the efficacy of a multi-session HIV Prevention program, adapted from an existing program (Project SAFE), for incarcerated women in the rural South.