Warren symposium follows legacy of geneticist giant

If we want to understand how the brain creates memories, and how genetic disorders distort the brain’s machinery, then the fragile X gene is an ideal place to start. That’s why the Stephen T. Warren Memorial Symposium, taking place November 28-29 at Emory, will be a significant event for those interested in neuroscience and genetics. Stephen T. Warren, 1953-2021 Warren, the founding chair of Emory’s Department of Human Genetics, led an international team that discovered Read more

Mutations in V-ATPase proton pump implicated in epilepsy syndrome

Why and how disrupting V-ATPase function leads to epilepsy, researchers are just starting to figure Read more

Tracing the start of COVID-19 in GA

At a time when COVID-19 appears to be receding in much of Georgia, it’s worth revisiting the start of the pandemic in early 2020. Emory virologist Anne Piantadosi and colleagues have a paper in Viral Evolution on the earliest SARS-CoV-2 genetic sequences detected in Georgia. Analyzing relationships between those virus sequences and samples from other states and countries can give us an idea about where the first COVID-19 infections in Georgia came from. We can draw Read more
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HAART

Fertility: a new frontier in treating those with HIV

HIV

Not long ago, physicians who treated those with HIV focused only on helping their patients stay well. Today some physicians are also beginning to focus on helping those patients conceive.

“Most of the patients who are now diagnosed with HIV are in their reproductive years, and as many as a third express a desire to have children,” says Emory reproductive endocrinologist Vitaly Kushnir, MD.

This emerging area of treatment has been made possible thanks to the growing effectiveness of a combination of drugs known as Highly Active Antiretroviral Therapy, or HAART, used for years to treat retroviruses, including HIV.

“Now that people with HIV are living longer, fertility and HIV is an emerging area of interest,” says Kushnir. “Several studies have indicated that HIV drugs if given early in the course of the disease can reduce the risk of transmission from an HIV-positive person to an HIV-negative person.”

But researchers and physicians know very little yet about how treatments for HIV, the virus itself, and the comorbidities associated with HIV affect fertility. So, Kushnir and his colleague, Emory pathologist William Lewis, MD, decided it was time to explore existing data on how HIV and its treatment affect fertility, especially in women. Their review paper on the subject appears in the August 2011 issue of Fertility and Sterility.

Because there are safety concerns and legal restrictions on fertility treatments in couples in which one partner is HIV positive and the other is not, treatment options often are limited.

“This is becoming more and more of an issue,” says Kushnir. “It’s probably time for us to have a more open discussion about the access these patients have to fertility treatment. I think the current system probably discourages these patients from pursuing treatments that are a lot safer than trying to get pregnant on their own.”

Posted on August 4, 2011 by admin in Immunology Leave a comment