It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Wednesday, July 03, 2024
Social media is a likely cause of ‘confusion’ in modern mate selection
SOCIETY FOR EXPERIMENTAL BIOLOGY
IMAGE:
DIAGRAM EXPLAINING THE CASCADING EFFECTS OF SOCIAL MEDIA ON CONFUSION IN RELATIONSHIPS.
A recent sociological study finds that most young adults surveyed reported feeling confused about their options when it comes to dating decisions. Preliminary analysis suggests that more than half of young people experience confusion about choosing life-partners, with women appearing to be more likely to report partner selection confusion than men.
Due to the pervasiveness of social media and digital dating in everyday lives, humans are now exposed to many more potential mates than ever before, but the availability of popular dating apps and ease of photo enhancement can distort the reality of the available pool of dating candidates.
“Human mate selection is a complicated psychological process, which is effectively influenced by multiple societal factors including appearance, personality and financial situation,” says Chayan Munshi, Founder and Executive Director of the Ethophilia Research Foundation in Santiniketan, India. “More recently, this has become significantly influenced by social media where constant exposure to sexually stimulating or attractive content creates certain perceptions of reality in the young mindset, which ultimately creates confusion in terms of selecting potential mating partners.”
The Ethophilia Research Foundation is a research group focused on behavioural biology research and public health, who have recently started to investigate how the digitalisation of society is regulating human behaviour. “This project started with extensive observation of human behavioural patterns regarding partner choice,” says Mr Munshi. “This observational study was followed by direct interactions with a young population using an open questionnaire.”
The preliminary results of this ongoing project come from a survey of young adults in India, with most respondents being between 18 and 30 years old. Further analysis of the results is underway, with an expanded survey in preparation to include more specific lines of inquiry.
The questionnaire included questions related to romantic partner selection, such as “Do you feel confused when selecting a life-partner?”, “What are your criteria for selecting a life-partner?”, “Do you still look for other partners if you are already in a stable relationship?” and “Do you like to switch to a ‘better option’ when selecting a life-partner?”.
These initial results show that the perception of potential mate availability may be skewing how people judge their life-partner options, even while in existing relationships. “For instance, impulsiveness is significantly exhibited, and there is a decrease in in-person social interactions,” says Mr Munshi. “This is exposing confusion while people search for a mating partner and can manifest complexities in maintaining a relationship.”
Mr Munshi expects that this ongoing research will help to build a better understanding of how mate selection is evolving in humans. “Our hypothesis strongly indicates that the ‘pleasure index’ or ‘adrenaline rush’ of relationships is taking more prime importance in the younger generation over long-term stability,” he says. “It is alarming that impulsiveness or confusion can lead to instability in the human relation-maintaining behaviour, which is actually affecting the normal social behaviour in humans.”
“The pattern now is notable enough to indicate that this might modify the social norms of partner choice behaviour in young humans, which might have significant effect on the brain-behaviour circuit,” says Mr Munshi. “In the long run, this may eventually alterthe fundamental protocol of evolutionary mating strategies.”
This research is being presented at the Society for Experimental Biology Annual Conference in Prague on the 2-5th July 2024.
BIRD BRAINED, NOT
Blue and great tits deploy surprisingly powerful memories to find food
UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE
VIDEO:
BLUE AND GREAT TITS TAKING PART IN THE EPISODIC-LIKE MEMORY TEST. THE BIRDS VISIT AN AUTOMATED FOOD CONTAINER, THE DOOR RELEASES AND THEY TAKE THEIR PREFERRED FOOD: SUNFLOWER SEEDS.
Blue and great tits recall what they have eaten in the past, where they found the food and when they found it, a new study shows. In the first experiment of its kind to involve wild animals, blue and great tits demonstrated ‘episodic-like’ memory to cope with changes in food availability when foraging.
The same study may suggest that humans leaving out seeds and nuts for garden birds could be contributing to the evolution of these memory traits.
Episodic memory is a memory system involving the conscious recollection of personally experienced events. Many psychologists believe that episodic memory is uniquely human but a growing body of evidence suggests that many non-human animals possess episodic-like memory.
Published today in Current Biology, the study by researchers from the University of Cambridge and the University of East Anglia enabled 94 wild, free-living blue and great tits to take part in a series of memory tasks. These tasks involved automated food containers and a new software program that created unique experiences for individual birds, and tracked each bird’s behaviour after they formed a memory.
The birds had previously been fitted with unique radio frequency tracking tags on their legs so that when they landed on the feeder’s special perch, this read their tag, and custom-built programs released (or did not release) food through an electronic door, according to experimental rules with unique timed events specific to each individual bird.
The experiment focused on blue tits and great tits partly because they are opportunistic foragers feeding on a wide range of food types, and may benefit from being able to recall ecological details from a single experience as this would permit flexible decision-making.
“These findings provide the first evidence for episodic-like memory in the wild and show that blue and great tits have a more flexible memory system than we used to assume,” said first author James Davies, from the University of Cambridge’s Comparative Cognition Lab.
“Previous studies on episodic-like memory have involved bigger-brained bird species, corvids, which hide food. This study focuses on smaller brained more generalist birds that don’t hide their food. Our findings suggest these birds are more intelligent than they’ve been given credit for.”
Senior author Dr Gabrielle Davidson from the University of East Anglia said: “The birds were behaving naturally in a familiar environment, so we captured something more realistic than if the birds had been captive. It was remarkable to see these birds performed well in our memory tasks while also experiencing a bunch of other memories out in the wild.
“For us, field research is challenging because the birds are completely free not to take part in our experiments and just fly away, but we’ve shown this type of intelligence test in the wild works.”
Nicola Clayton, Professor of Comparative Cognition at the University of Cambridge, an author of the study and James Davies’ PhD supervisor, said:
“It is fascinating that these non-caching species of birds showed episodic-like memory using two independent tests. When I began this research in the late 1990s, most psychologists assumed that the ability to remember the ‘what, where and when’ of unique past events was uniquely human. The initial findings in scrub-jays showed that this was not the case. Subsequent research suggests that this ability is much more widespread in the animal kingdom than we previously thought.”
The researchers suggest that having a more flexible memory could help these birds cope with further environmental stress and fluctuation influenced by climate change.
James Davies said: “This type of memory would allow them to flexibly react to new conditions and combine this information with their original memory to make decisions. So whether they’re thinking about fruit ripening or caterpillars emerging, that’s a powerful ability to have when things get tough.”
The study also might suggest that humans leaving out food for garden birds could be one factor contributing to the evolution of these memory traits, just as these birds have evolved beak adaptations in response to increased reliance on garden feeders.
Dr Gabrielle Davidson said: “It is possible that these birds are picking up on and remembering our routines in terms of when we top up bird feeders. This needs further study.”
The tests
To assess ‘what-where-when’ memory, the researchers adapted an existing study design – developed by Nicola Clayton and Anthony Dickinson – to simulate a realistic foraging scenario in which two food items – sunflower seeds and peanut pieces – ran out and replenished at different rates. The foods were selected having already proven that great and blue tits prefer sunflower seeds to peanut pieces.
The birds were given time to learn the ‘temporal feeder’ rules before the tests began. When an individual was first detected on the ‘preferred’ sunflower seed feeder, this triggered a 2-hour period of availability to that bird. After that point, a ‘replenish period’ began and the feeder door remained closed to that individual until the following day.
To pass the memory test, birds have to remember the details of this experience and apply it to new situations. This means that when they come back to the feeders 2 hours later, they should remember they had already eaten their favourite food, and that only their less preferred food is currently available.
This research shows great tits and blue tits make this switch, without having to check if their favourite food is available. This switch in behaviour, based on previous experience, is what indicates these birds use episodic-like memory - comparable to studies involving captive rodents, dogs, corvids, cephalopods and non-human primates.
Only a bird’s first choice after each interval was counted to ensure that their critical choice regarding which feeder to visit was based on a memory of their first visit of the day, rather than a reaction to a non-rewarding feeder (i.e., a win-stay/lose-shift strategy).
An advantage for juvenile birds
In a different task, the researchers tested birds on their ability to recall ‘incidental details’ of feeders to locate food.
In a ‘where’ test, the feeders were arranged in a triangle and in a straight line. In the ‘which’ test, each feeder was painted a different colour (yellow, red or blue) or pattern (black stripes, wavy lines, or spots on a white background).
While most birds passed the ‘where’ test, in the ‘which’ test only the juveniles recalled visual clues to help them access food.
James Davies said: “We didn’t expect that finding. We already know juvenile blue tits and great tits have to be more innovative in their foraging because adults outcompete them and monopolise food, which may help to explain our own findings. As blue tits and great tits gain experience, perhaps they start to rely less on visual information and more on spatial information.”
Professor Clayton said: “The next step is to test whether individual birds that are better at using their episodic-like memory have enhanced reproductive success, in which case we would expect that memory system to evolve in response to more challenging environmental conditions.”
A great tit wearing a radiofrequency identification tag as used in the study
A great tit wearing a radiofrequency identification tag as used in the study.
CREDIT
James ONeill
Funding
The study received financial support from the University of Cambridge.
Dr Gabrielle Davidson was funded by an Isaac Newton Trust and Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship (ECF-2018-700).
Fukuoka, Japan—The phenomenon known as El Niño can cause abnormal and extreme climate around the world due to it dramatically altering the normal flow of the atmosphere. In Japan, historical data has shown that El Niño years tend to lead to warmer winters. This case was exemplified recently with Japan’s warm 2023-2024 winter season. However, there have also been cases of cold winters in Japan during El Niño years, such as the one recorded in 2014-2015. Yet, it was unclear as to why this was occurring.
Publishing in the Journal of Climate, researchers from Kyushu University’s Research Institute for Applied Mechanics have found that the early onset of El Niño around June leads to warm winter climates in East Asia, while the late onset of El Niño is associated with colder winters. The team hopes that their results can help better model winter climate patterns in East Asia during El Niño years, and lead to more accurate long-term climate predictions.
El Niño is a climate pattern characterized by the warming of the tropical eastern Pacific Ocean caused by the weakening of equatorial trade winds that blow from the western coast of South America to the Philippines and Indonesia. In regular years, these trade winds would push the ocean’s warmer waters westward leading to cooler waters rising in the east. These warmer western waters drive atmospheric convection generating clouds and rain.
“Each El Niño is individually unique, and no two El Niños are exactly alike,” explains Post-doctoral Fellow Masahiro Shiozaki who authored the study. “Naturally, these differences lead to a variety of abnormal global climate patterns. To better predict regional weather and climate during El Niño, it is important to know how and where the atmosphere changes.”
Shiozaki highlighted a case in Japan during the winter of 2023-2024. This was an El Niño year, and in Japan that tends to mean a warmer winter. And in fact, the winter of 2023-2024 was inordinately warm. However, this was not always the case. In the El Niño year of 2014-2015, Japan’s winter was colder than average.
“Japanese winters are also influenced by the Arctic as well as strong natural variability inherent to the atmosphere. Because of these various effects, it has been challenging to identify how El Niño determines warm or cold winters in East Asia,” continues Shiozaki. “To address this issue, we simulated the weather patterns of the past 61 years in 100 different ways by adding perturbations to the weather patterns. In this simulation, 1700 El Niño events occurred, and we calculated how the atmosphere changed each time. This method allowed us to reduce any atmospheric noise in the data, giving us a clearer view of El Niño’s direct impact.”
The team’s analysis found that it was not only El Niño, but also an anomalous warming of the tropical Indian Ocean that led to warmer East Asian winters. The early onset of El Niño around June effectively warmed the Indian Ocean from summer to winter. This ocean warming suppressed atmospheric convection over the tropical western Pacific, resulting in less rainfall and atmospheric heating.
“The resulting reduction in atmospheric heating excited atmospheric waves that propagated into the western North Pacific, forming an anomalous anticyclonic circulation southeast of Japan,” Shiozaki explains. “Anomalous south-easterly winds from this circulation pattern weakened the northwesterly winter monsoon from the continent, leading to the warm winter climate in East Asia. On the other hand, cold Japanese winters are associated with a late onset of El Niño and no significant warming of the Indian Ocean.”
The team hopes their new findings will be utilized by researchers and meteorologists to better predict climate patterns months in advance, especially during active El Niño phases.
“The influence of global warming is clear in the recent trend of warmer winters worldwide. The effects of rising water temperatures are especially evident in the Indian Ocean,” concludes Professor Hiroki Tokinaga who led the research team. “Further research is needed to determine how global warming and other tropical climate phenomena will change future winters in East Asia.”
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For more information about this research, see “What Determines the East Asian Winter Temperature during El Niño?— Role of the Early-Onset El Niño and Tropical Indian Ocean Warming," Masahiro Shiozaki, Hiroki Tokinaga, and Masato Mori Journal of Climate, https://doi.org/10.1175/JCLI-D-23-0627.1
About Kyushu University Founded in 1911, Kyushu University is one of Japan's leading research-oriented institutes of higher education, consistently ranking as one of the top ten Japanese universities in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings and the QS World Rankings. The university is one of the seven national universities in Japan, located in Fukuoka, on the island of Kyushu—the most southwestern of Japan’s four main islands with a population and land size slightly larger than Belgium. Kyushu U’s multiple campuses—home to around 19,000 students and 8000 faculty and staff—are located around Fukuoka City, a coastal metropolis that is frequently ranked among the world's most livable cities and historically known as Japan's gateway to Asia. Through its VISION 2030, Kyushu U will “drive social change with integrative knowledge.” By fusing the spectrum of knowledge, from the humanities and arts to engineering and medical sciences, Kyushu U will strengthen its research in the key areas of decarbonization, medicine and health, and environment and food, to tackle society’s most pressing issues.
New experimental research shows that muscle metabolic activity may be an important factor in the incredible longevity of the world’s oldest living vertebrate species – the Greenland shark. These findings may have applications for conservation of this vulnerable species against climate change or even for human cardiovascular health.
Greenland sharks (Somniosus microcephalus) are the longest living vertebrate with an expected lifespan of at least 270 years and possible lifespan beyond 500 years. “We want to understand what adaptations they have that allow them to live so long,” says Mr Ewan Camplisson, a PhD student at the University of Manchester, UK.
Previously it was thought that this long lifespan was due to the shark’s cold environment and minimal movement, but the factors behind this species extreme longevity appear to be far more complex - prompting Mr Camplisson and his team to investigate alternative theories.
“Most species show variation in their metabolism when they age,” says Mr Camplisson. “We want to determine if Greenland sharks also show this traditional sign of aging or if their metabolism remains unaltered over time.”
To measure the metabolism of the sharks, Mr Camplisson and his team conducted enzyme assays on preserved muscle tissue samples from Greenland sharks. They measured the metabolic activity of these enzymes with a spectrophotometer across a range of different shark ages and environmental temperatures.
Surprisingly, Mr Camplisson and his team found no significant variation in muscle metabolic activity across different ages, suggesting that their metabolism does not appear to decrease over time and may play a key role in their longevity. “This is quite different to most animals which tend to show some variation in their metabolic enzyme activity as they age,” he says. “The results support our hypothesis that the Greenland shark does not show the same traditional signs of aging as other animals.”
The results of this study also show that the Greenland shark's metabolic enzymes were significantly more active at higher temperatures. “This would suggest that the shark’s red muscle metabolism is not specially adapted for the polar environment, otherwise we would have expected to see less of a temperature related difference in activity,” says Mr Camplisson.
In a world with a rapidly changing climate, long-lived species that are less able to adapt may be the most at risk of extinction. “A female Greenland shark may not become sexually mature until it is 150 years old and with such a long generation time, the species will have far less of a chance to adapt to anthropogenic changes in their environment,” says Mr Camplisson.
Mr Camplisson plans to test more enzymes and tissue types to gain an even deeper understanding of the shark’s metabolic activity. “My ultimate goal is to protect the species and the best way to do this is to better understand them,” he says.
Mr Camplisson is also interested in the possible applications of this research for our understanding of human heart disease. “By studying the Greenland shark and its heart, we may be able to better understand our own cardiovascular health,” he says. “These are issues that become progressively more common and severe with increasing age.”
This research is being presented at the Society for Experimental Biology Annual Conference in Prague on the 2-5th July 2024.
A new breakthrough in understanding regeneration in a marine worm
The sea worm Platynereis dumerilii is only a few centimetres long but has a remarkable ability: in just a few days, it can regenerate entire parts of its body after an injury or amputation. By focusing more specifically on the mechanisms at play in the regeneration of this worm’s tail, a research team led by a CNRS scientist1 has observed that gut cells play a role in the regeneration of the intestine as well as other tissues such as muscle and epidermis. Even more surprising, the team found that this ability of gut cells to regenerate other tissue varies according to their location: the closer they are to the posterior end of the worm, the greater the variety of cell types they can rebuild2. This study will appear in Development on 2 July.
Scientists carried out these observations by monitoring the outcome of gut cells and proliferative cells that form close to the amputated end of the worm. This was tracked using different markers in particular by fluorescent beads ingested by the worms. Annelids, or ‘segmented worms’, which have only been studied in the last 20 years, are an ideal model for the study of regeneration, a process that is widespread in animals but still mysterious for scientists.
The research team will continue this work to determine whether cell types, other than gut cells, can play a role in regenerating a variety of cell types.
2 - Only cells involved in the nervous system and growth zone of the worm (a ring of stem cells involved in the continuous growth of the animal until it reaches sexual maturity) cannot, it appears, be generated by gut cells found in the posterior end of the worm.
Variations in cell plasticity and proliferation underlie distinct modes of regeneration along the antero-posterior axis in the annelid Platynereis.
ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE
2-Jul-2024
Six out of ten illegal online ads for medicines are not recognized by consumers
CAPSULE Project, led by Transcrime-Università Cattolica, analyzed consumer awareness towards online purchases of illicit medicines in Italy and Spain
UNIVERSITA CATTOLICA DEL SACRO CUORE
Only half (53%) of online advertisements for medicines are correctly categorized by consumers as legitimate or illicit. This result emerged from project CAPSULE, conducted by Transcrime, Joint Research Center of the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in cooperation with the Inspection & Certification Department of the Italian Medicines Agency - AIFA and supported by Michigan State University’s Center for Anti-Counterfeiting and Product Protection (A-CAPP). The project aimed to investigate consumers’ awareness of substandard and falsified medicines (SFMs) and the risk of purchasing them online.
The pharmaceutical illicit market has grown during the COVID-19 pandemic, exploiting vulnerable consumers through misleading online advertisementsand websites, endangering public health and undermining regulatory measures. Existing efforts to combat the spread of SFMs online focus mainly on targeting online supply. The CAPSULE project instead focused on the demand side of the market, assessing the exposure and behavior of Italian and Spanish consumers to define targeted information campaigns and interventions. The report is available here.
In January 2024, a survey was conducted among a representative sample of Internet users in Italy and Spain who were aware of the possibility of buying medicines online and had been exposed to online advertising or had bought at least one medicine online. The survey exposed them to a mix of legitimate and illegitimate online advertisements for medicines. The results showed that consumers correctly categorized legitimate advertisements 63% of the time, but struggled significantly with illicit ads, correctly identifying them only 43% of the time in Italy and 42% in Spain. The most important factors influencing the decisions of the respondents are the absence of a label certifying authorization by the Ministry of Health, followed by the absence of a drug description or the presence of errors.
To foster responsible choices among consumers, the results of the study highlight the need for awareness campaigns tailored to different demographics and types of consumers: while older participants showed less capacity to detect illicit advertisements, younger participants expressed less trust in healthcare professionals and a higher propensity to rely on the Internet for obtaining healthcare information.
Analysis of respondents' awareness and behavior also showed that:
Most respondents were aware that legitimate online medicine sales in Italy and Spain are restricted to non-prescription medicines (73% in Italy and 66% in Spain).
Onlyone third distinguished dietary supplements from medicinal products, underscoring the difficulty in distinguishing between products subject to different regulations.
More than half of respondents (58% in Italy, 52% in Spain) rely on the internet for medical information and around 40% look for specific health solutions or alternative treatments online.
Italian participants exhibited a higher rate of online purchases (69%) of medicines compared to Spain (52%). A substantial majority of Italians (85%) and Spaniards (75%) reported having seen at least one form of online advertisement for medicines.
A comparison with a previous survey conducted in 2015-2016 by AIFA and Sapienza University of Rome revealed a significant increase in online medicine purchases in both countries.
Websites are the primary access points for both advertising and purchases for online medicines, followed by social media and e-commerce platforms. Social media are emerging as relevant platforms for advertising.
In Italy, flu treatments were the most popular online purchases, followed by chronic pain and cholesterol management medicines. Spanish consumers mainly bought performance-enhancing and weight-loss products.
“Given the overall increase in online purchases of medicines," says Dr. Marco Dugato, researcher at Transcrime, "the results of the CAPSULE project and, specifically, the difficulty in distinguishing illegal advertising underline, on the one side, the role of targeted awareness campaigns to help consumers make informed choices and, on the other side, the need for better crime-proofing of legitimate advertising and selling channels to reduce the diffusion of substandard or fake medicines. This also requires a constant support from research in this area to monitor evolving consumer behavior and market dynamics".
"This collaboration with Transcrime gives continuity to the work on online pharmaceuticals that AIFA has been carrying out for almost twenty years," says Dr. Domenico Di Giorgio, Director of the Office for Product Quality and Fight against Pharmaceutical Crime of the Italian Medicines Agency - AIFA. "The ability of national centres of excellence to work together in important international initiatives, as Transcrime and AIFA recently did for the MEDI-THEFT project on medicines theft, is one of the most effective features of the Italian approach in this field and a key element in defining strategies to combat pharmaceutical crime and other forms of market distortion."
“This survey findings’ point to the significant availability of substandard and falsified medicines in online marketplaces, but more importantly, the proliferation of advertising such products to consumers,” says Dr. Saleem Alhabash, Associate Director of Research at the A-CAPP Center. “The combination of SFM supply and promotion/marketing of these products via social media presents a heightened risk to the health and well-being of consumers in Italy and Spain, as well as other countries around the world.”
ARTICLE TITLE
Six out of Ten Illegal Online Ads for Medicines Are Not Recognised by Consumers
New lab test to detect persistent HIV strains in Africa may aid search for cure
WEILL CORNELL MEDICINE
IMAGE:
HIV PARTICLES (TINY YELLOW SPHERES) ARE ATTACKING A CD4+ T CELL SHOWN IN BLUE. THE VIRUS PREFERENTIALLY TARGETS T CELLS, WHICH PLAY A CRITICAL ROLE IN THE BODY'S IMMUNE RESPONSE AGAINST INVADERS LIKE BACTERIA AND VIRUSES.
CREDIT: SETH PINCUS, ELIZABETH FISCHER AND AUSTIN ATHMAN, NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES, NATIONAL INSTITUTES OF HEALTH
A multinational team led by Weill Cornell Medicine investigators developed a test that will help measure the persistence of HIV in people affected by viral strains found predominantly in Africa—a vital tool in the search for an HIV cure that will benefit patients around the world.
The study, published in Nature Communications on July 2, helps fill a major gap in human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) research. Most HIV studies have focused on strains circulating in Western countries, predominantly in men who have sex with men affected by subtype B. Few studies have examined strains circulating in Africa, where women are disproportionately affected.
“HIV cure research tends to focus on viral strains circulating in developed countries, but to achieve a cure that is globally applicable, we must study viral strains that are affecting other regions of the world,” said lead author Dr. Guinevere Lee, assistant professor of virology in medicine in the Division of Infectious Diseases and assistant professor of microbiology and immunology at Weill Cornell Medicine.
The findings show—like other studies in developed countries—that HIV strains circulating in Africa establish viral reservoirs in the human body. Although antiretroviral therapy can reduce the level of HIV in the blood to an undetectable level, these dormant reservoirs continue to survive. They contain a large number of defective proviral DNA genomes which can’t produce new infectious viruses, but a small number of genomes remain genetically intact and ready to produce active viruses if antiretroviral treatment is interrupted.
The large proportion of defective viral genomes obscures researchers’ attempts to accurately quantify the copies of intact proviruses. “We are looking for a needle in a haystack: To achieve an HIV cure, we need to first find out whether any genome-intact proviruses remain in the body during antiretroviral treatment. Our new assay allows us to do this. Then we need to target and eliminate the intact proviral DNA capable of producing new viruses,” Dr. Lee explained.
Broadening the Lens of HIV Research with a New Assay
Dr. Lee and her colleagues analyzed DNA from immune cells called CD4+ T cells, where viral DNA hides, of 16 women and 7 men receiving antiretroviral HIV treatment in Uganda. Genetic sequencing of the virus revealed two predominant HIV-1 subtypes: A1 and D (a notoriously aggressive strain). The study also identified viral hybrids of A1 and D.
The team then modified existing laboratory tests that identify HIV subtype B proviruses to detect proviruses that are subtypes A1 and D. “The new assay we’ve developed will help researchers home in on the intact proviral genomes relevant to HIV cure research for patients affected by these under studied strains,” Dr. Lee said.
Dr. Lee and her multinational, multi-institution collaborators are already using the new assay to study long-term viral persistence in Uganda. Their findings show that the composition of the HIV proviral genomic landscape is broadly comparable between subtypes A1, D and B suggesting that approaches to target intact HIV reservoirs in Africa will face similar “needle-in-a-haystack” challenges as in North America and Europe. Future studies will also need to evaluate differences in non-B subtypes to understand whether subtype-specific factors impact persistence, reactivation or clearance in viral reservoirs.
Senior authors on the paper include Dr. Andrew Redd, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health, and Dr. Jessica Prodger, assistant professor, Departments of Microbiology & Immunology and Epidemiology & Biostatistics at Western University, Canada.
Researchers from Simon Fraser University, Canada; British Columbia Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS, Canada; Rakai Health Sciences Program, Uganda; University of Cape Town, South Africa; and Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine also contributed to this study.
The National Institutes of Health is funding this work through the Research Enterprise to Advance a Cure for HIV (REACH) Martin Delaney Collaboratory, which is co-led by Dr. Brad Jones, associate professor of immunology in medicine and also associate professor of microbiology and immunology at Weill Cornell Medicine, and Dr. Marina Caskey, professor of clinical investigation at Rockefeller University and an adjunct professor of medicine at Weill Cornell Medicine and attending infectious disease physician at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center. The REACH Collaboratory is one of 10 NIH-funded collaborative research groups worldwide focused on finding an HIV cure.
This work was supported in part by the Division of Intramural Research, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and NIH grants R21AI150398, R01AI162221 and UM1AI164565.
