The degeneration of neurons in the mammalian brain is commonly associated with the division of cells located in the damaged area. The aim of the present study has been to characterise the phenotype of newly born cells in the striatum of adult rats following 6-hydroxydopamine lesion of the nigro-striatal pathway. Newborn cells were identified through labelling with either bromodeoxyuridine or re...

Universal access to anti-retroviral (ARV) medication for HIV/AIDS is the clarion call of the WHO/UNAIDS 3 by 5 Initiative. Treatment coverage, however, remains highly uneven. This sharpens the question of who exactly is accessing ARVs and whether access is challenging inequality or reinforcing it. Issues of distributive justice have long been debated in health policy, but the practical challeng...

Retroviruses are distinguished from other viruses by several features. Notably, some retroviruses are present as normal elements in the genomes of virtually all vertebrates (endogenous proviruses). Others are exogenous, i.e. horizontally transmitted agents, many of which cause fatal diseases. The endogenous retroviruses are genetically transmitted and to a large extent their significance is unc...

Given relatively high levels of adherence to HIV treatment in Africa, we explore factors facilitating children's adherence, despite poverty, social disruption and limited health infrastructure. Using interviews with 25 nurses and 40 guardians in Zimbabwe, we develop our conceptualisation of an 'adherence competent community', showing how members of five networks (children, guardians, community ...

The EAV-HP group of chicken endogenous retrovirus elements was previously shown to be defective, with large deletions of the pol gene. In this report, we demonstrate that genomes of other Gallus species also maintain EAV-HP elements with similar deletions. The chicken EAV-HP1 locus was detected in both red (Gallus gallus gallus) and Sonnerat's (Gallus sonneratii) jungle fowl with identical inte...

The contribution of early cell lineage to regional fate in the mammalian forebrain remains poorly understood. Previous lineage-tracing studies using retroviral methods were only begun at mid-neurogenesis and have suffered from region-specific retroviral silencing. We have been able to study cell lineage in the telencephalon from the onset of neurogenesis by using ultrasound backscatter microsco...

Materials and methods A retrospective study of patients diagnosed with ARS in our facility between 1999-2009, who had previously tested negative at an ELISA test and consequently had a positive or negative ELISA and a viral load of over 10.000 copies/ml were included in the study. Patients were divided into two groups: patients who were only treated initially and then therapy was stopped (group...

BACKGROUND Different genotypic HIV resistance algorithms are based on different rules. They may therefore result in different drug-resistance interpretations for the same patient sample. In particular, for early periods of new retroviral inhibitors or classes, sequence interpretation is expected to vary. One would, however, assume that those differences between systems wane with growing experie...

Recent studies indicate that greater than 10% of the human and mouse genome appears to consist of integrated DNA copies of RNA molecules. These sequences include retroviruses, retrovirus-like DNAs, retrotransposons, and retrotranscripts and represent more than 500,000 separate integration events. The nature of the enzymes used for the reverse transcription from RNA to DNA and for integration of...