health - "national hiv"

AP - Plans for a large-scale trial of a potential AIDS vaccine are being dropped in favor of a smaller, more focused study, the national Institutes of health said Thursday.

The US Senate votes to lift a long-standing ban on allowing hiv-positive visitors to enter the US.

Plans for a large-scale trial of a potential AIDS vaccine are being dropped in favor of a smaller, more focused study, the national Institutes of health said.

Researchers at Fred Hutchinson cancer Research Center have received a $7.6 million, four-year grant from the national Human Genome Research Institute to better understand the genetic and biological roots of common diseases. The Hutchinson Center is one of four U.S. research institutes to receive grants totaling about $31 million toward this effort.

Catching some ZZZs isn't easy for some moms. More than 60 percent of women interviewed in a national Sleep Foundation survey say they experience a sleep problem three or more nights a week.

Former President Clinton's foundation has signed pricing agreements with several suppliers involved in making a malaria-fighting drug in an effort to stabilize the medication's fluctuating costs and ensure more dependable availability.The foundation described the agreements to The Associated Press ahead of an announcement Clinton was to make Thursday at the organization's Manhattan headquarters.The former president in 2002 established an HIV/AIDS initiative that sought to negotiate lower prices for antiretroviral treatments, and he since has expanded his focus to include malaria treatments such as artemisinin-based combination therapies, or ACTs.

After soliciting and considering broad input from the scientific and hiv advocacy communities, the national Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the national Institutes of health (NIH), has determined that it will not conduct the hiv vaccine study known as PAVE 100. However, NIAID believes the vaccine developed by its Vaccine Research Center (VRC) is scientifically intriguing and sufficiently different from previously tested hiv vaccines to consider testing it in a smaller, more focused clinical study.

Nonprofit Cites '10 Best and Worst States' In providing government affordable health insurance assistance. District of Columbia, New York and Alaska top list, While Georgia, Arizona and California rank lowest.Americans who need help from the government in paying for health care coverage -- if they experience unemployment or can't afford private insurance -- should know that while Medicaid is a national program that provides this assistance, every state has different service offerings, eligibility requirements and funding levels.read more

US and UK scientists investigating a gene variant that protects people of African descent from a serious type of malaria, have discovered that it may increase their vulnerability to hiv infection by as much as 40 per cent, because of the way it allows the hiv virus to attach to red blood cells. The study was led by researchers at the The University of Texas health Science Center at San Antonio, and is published in the 17th July issue of Cell Host and Microbe.

Republican Senator Dole introduced an amendment to name an HIV/AIDS relief bill after the recently deceased Jesse Helms.