Dr Conant delivered a lecture at the American Dermatological Association meeting in Napa last week. You can view the presentation here: Pitfalls, Perils & Pearls

Dr Conant’s Comments:

“We should expect to see more and more of this collaboration between science and the general public in the years to come. We know that using thousands of computers increases our electronic capability of problem-solving; we forget that it simultaneously increases our human brain power by employing thousands of our fellow humans with unique experiences and insights. The same efforts are being used to map the galaxies and to look for intelligent life outside of our solar system. Gov. Rick Perry may not think much of science. But science is doing some pretty incredible things.”

Online Gamers Crack AIDS Enzyme Puzzle

By Agence France-Presse

Sunday, September 18th, 2011 — 2:41 pm

PARIS — Online gamers have achieved a feat beyond the realm of Second Life or Dungeons and Dragons: they have deciphered the structure of an enzyme of an AIDS-like virus that had thwarted scientists for a decade.

The exploit is published on Sunday in the journal Nature Structural & Molecular Biology, where — exceptionally in scientific publishing — both gamers and researchers are honoured as co-authors.

Their target was a monomeric protease enzyme, a cutting agent in the complex molecular tailoring of retroviruses, a family that includes HIV. Figuring out the structure of proteins is vital for understanding the causes of many diseases and developing drugs to block them.

MORE…

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/09/18/online-gamers-crack-aids-enzyme-puzzle

“Perianal and anal warts are very common in individuals who have receptive anal sex.
Anal warts (HPV) can progress to dysplasia (abnormal cells), and then to malignant squamous cell carcinoma.
This form of cancer may be painless for many months and the only way to diagnose it in an early stage is by doing a rectal Pap (Papanicolaou) smear.

Many individuals who have engaged in receptive anal sex do not disclose this to their physician. They should do so and request an anal Pap smear at least once a year. The Pap smear will detect early dysplastic changes from asymptomatic changes inside the rectum and the dysplastic area can be destroyed before it becomes malignant.

Advanced squamous cell carcinoma of the rectum with metastases is an emotionally degrading and painful way to die.”

Read the full article here.

Dr Conant’s Comments:

“I started offering preexposure prophylaxis to HIV-negative men who were at high risk of contracting HIV about six years ago. I had only about a dozen patients in that six year time frame, and most of them chose to stop taking the preexposure prophylaxis because their insurance companies would not pay for the medication and it was too expensive.

About 10 years ago Dr. Michael Youle and I approached senior management at Gilead to provide funding for an HIV preexposure prophylactic trial in high-risk men. Unfortunately, the company was not willing to pursue this initiative.

Recent trials have shown that preexposure prophylaxis if taken regularly significantly reduces the chance of contracting HIV. Studies have also shown that if HIV-positive patients are treated and can maintain an undetectable viral load they are at little or no risk to infecting their sexual partners.

It appears to me that the way to stop the HIV/AIDS epidemic in San Francisco is to test everyone for HIV, treat everyone who is HIV-positive the moment they are found to be positive, and then monitor those patients through the Public Health Service to be certain that they maintain an undetectable viral load.

This use of resources would significantly diminish HIV transmission, allow for contact tracing, keep HIV positive people  healthier and decrease transmission. The cost of this program would be more than the cost of prescribing pre-exposure prophylaxis to a few patients, but would be far more effective in reducing the number of HIV infections in the city and in the long run far more cost-effective.

I am pleased to see that San Francisco is going to be a test site for preexposure prophylaxis. I’m anxious to see who is going to pay for this program long  term.”

View the video.

Featuring interviews with:

MARCUS A. CONANT, M.D.
HIV/AIDS Treatment Specialist

BURTON P. DORMAN, Ph.D.
Co-Founder and President, AGRI and Acrogen, Inc.

DONALD P. FRANCIS, M.D., D.Sc.
Global Health/Infectious Disease Scientist

DONALD KENNEDY, Ph.D.
Stanford University, Science Magazine, US F.D.A.

ZILOSE LYONS
Infectious Disease Prevention Advocate

HAYNES W. SHEPPARD, Ph.D. Immunologist
Public Health Laboratory Specialist

Summer Interns:

We are happy to have two interns working with us for this summer. Daniel Alexander and Robert Kline are graduates of the Urban School of San Francisco and were two of the student leaders that helped us implement the pilot program in February. Given their first-hand experience and knowledge of the program and the leadership qualities they demonstrated, we saw it fit that they would be the ones given the opportunity to ensure that the program continues to reach other adolescents in the future.

In addition to helping us refine the curriculum, they are tasked with searching for funding that would allow us to implement the Teens For Testing program in additional schools during the upcoming year. With the help of these young men we are in the process of contacting over 200 corporations, non-profit foundations, and the like in an attempt to secure adequate funds to circulate the Teens For Testing program. We are dedicating all of our efforts to acquiring sufficient funding to allow us to continue this innovative and exciting program.

Refining Our Peer Education Model:

This summer we have engaged education consultant Sara Schonwald of Listen to Lead Consulting to help us refine and further develop the Teens For Testing curriculum. Sara was instrumental in the success of our pilot program at the Urban School and we are very happy to have her expertise as we look for new ways to educate teens about HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases.

Phase 2 @ Urban School:

In September, we will launch the second implementation of Teens For Testing at the Urban School of San Francisco. We’ll implement the refined and improved peer-education model over a span of eight weeks with the Testing Day for the senior class slated for November 4. We are excited to continue our partnership with the Urban School and feel exceptionally lucky that the students there have taken such an interest in becoming involved in the program yet again.

Global Giving Challenge:

Conant Foundation’s Teens For Testing program has been accepted into the Global Giving fundraising network. Global Giving’s fundraising platform connects non-profit organizations and donors from across the globe to donors worldwide. We’ve been conditionally accepted but in order to earn a permanent spot on their site we need to raise $4000 from at least 50 different people within 30 days. The money we raise now will go directly to supporting Phase 2 of our pilot at the Urban School and to offset costs associated with building our innovative curriculum. Every dollar counts and you can donate as little as $10. Click here to donate. 

Dr Conant’s Latest Work:

Dr. Conant recently returned from a trip to the World Congress of Dermatology in South Korea, where he delivered the lecture, “A New Paradigm to Stop the AIDS Epidemic in America.” He said, “We were pleasantly surprised at the overflow audience,” that came to hear him speak. He also published an article about the early years of the AIDS epidemic in the UN Chronicle, a publication released by the United Nations. The full article, which came out in the May 15^th, 2011 edition can be read here.

Dr. Conant is also currently involved in exciting research on the diagnosis and treatment of Lyme disease. He is due to speak at the International Lyme and Associated Diseases Society (ILADS) conference in Toronto in September.

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We’ll be posting additional updates in the coming months. Thank you for staying connected and supporting the Conant Foundation.

July 21, 2011 — There is an ongoing “explosion” of deadly hepatitis C among men who have sex with men.

It’s spread mainly by anal sex, often enhanced by methamphetamine, according to a report in the July 21 issue of the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

“We are having an explosion of sexually transmitted hepatitis C,” study researcher Daniel S. Fierer, MD, of New York’s Mount Sinai School of Medicine, tells WebMD. “We have uncovered an emerging epidemic of sexual transmission of hepatitis C. And the main reason is men having anal sex without a condom.”

It’s no surprise to experts who treat hepatitis C. Liver cancer and cirrhosis caused by hepatitis C virus (HCV) already is the leading cause of death among people with HIV infection who have access to HIV drugs. Some 30% of Americans with HIV are co-infected with HCV.

Sexual transmission of HCV among people without HIV is rare, notes Eugene R. Schiff, MD, director of the Center for Liver Diseases at the University of Miami, who was not involved in the Fierer/CDC study. Among heterosexual couples, he says, only 2% of those with HCV infect their partners after 20 years of monogamous marriage.

The same may be true for men who have sex with men — if they practice safe sex.

“Our data do not support sexual HCV transmission between HIV-negative men,” Fierer says. “There is reasonable data that HIV-negative men are not part of this epidemic.”

But that’s not the case for HIV-positive men, notes Lynn E. Taylor, MD, of Brown University. Taylor was not involved in the Fierer study. In a study published last March, Taylor and her colleagues showed that new HCV infections are relatively common among HIV-positive men who do not use intravenous drugs — a phenomenon previously reported in Europe and Australia.

“We have robust evidence of increasing HCV incidence among men who have sex with men who do not inject drugs but do engage in high-risk sexual behaviors,” Taylor, who was not involved in the Fierer study, tells WebMD. “It is the new sexually transmitted infection in this population. I am very concerned.”

Schiff notes that when HIV-positive men get HCV, they have much higher levels of the hepatitis C virus in their blood. Taylor and Schiff warn that hepatitis C infection progresses quickly in people with HIV infection.

“These men are sitting ducks for liver cancer,” Taylor says. “If they don’t get treated and get HCV eradication, they are at risk of cirrhosis or liver cancer. … We are seeing tons of gay men newly diagnosed with HIV, and then with HCV. I could go to a funeral of an HCV patient every week.”