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Background: As a result of traumatic early histories, female adolescents in foster care are at great risk for contracting human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and other sexually transmitted diseases. Objective: The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of the Becoming a Responsible Teen (BART) curriculum on adolescents' condom awareness and HIV risk knowledge. BART is an 8-week group intervention that combines education and behavior skills training with content on topics such as sexual assertion, refusal, problem solving, and risk recognition. Design: Adolescents living in residential foster care participated in the BART intervention. The study used a pretest/posttest design with one group. Findings: Preintervention and postintervention measures of outcomes of condom awareness and HIV risk knowledge improved significantly after the BART group intervention. Conclusion: Adolescent females in foster care have experienced multiple early adversities and are a high-risk group for sexually transmitted diseases. BART increased the adolescents knowledge related to condom use and HIV risk and encouraged participants to spread the word to other adolescents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Travellers are ageing and frequently report chronic illness. Pre-travel health advice is crucial, particularly in this subgroup, and general practitioners (GPs) are first in line for treatment adjustment before departure. Our aim is to evaluate pre-travel health advice seeking from GPs by travellers with chronic illness seen at a travel clinic., Methods: A cross-sectional observational survey using a questionnaire was conducted between August 2013 and July 2014 in travellers attending the travel medicine clinic of a tertiary university hospital in France., Results: During the study, 2019 travellers were included. Mean age was 39.4 years (±18.8). Three hundred and ninety-one (19.4%) travellers reported a history of a chronic illness. Arterial hypertension and diabetes mellitus were the most frequently reported illnesses, affecting, respectively, 168 (8.3%) travellers and 102 (5.1%). Hajj pilgrims were more likely to report a history of chronic illness than other travellers. Only 810 (40.1%) travellers sought pre-travel advice from their GP. Six hundred and fifty-two (40.1%) healthy travellers and 158 (40.5%) travellers reporting chronic illness sought pre-travel advice from their GP (P = 0.96)., Conclusion: Travellers with a history of chronic illness do not seek pre-travel health advice from their GP more frequently than healthy travellers. Travel health specialists are generally not the best practitioners to manage the care of underlying medical conditions presenting risks during travel. However, GPs offer continuity and disease management expertise to improve the specificity of pre-travel planning. Thus, ongoing collaboration between the traveller, GP and travel health specialist is likely to yield the best outcomes., (© International Society of Travel Medicine, 2016. All rights reserved. Published by Oxford University Press. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.)

The V1/V2 domain of the HIV-1 gp120 envelope protein has been shown to contribute to viral cell tropism during infection and also to viral recognition by neutralizing monoclonal antibodies. However, this domain has been poorly investigated. Carbohydrates have been demonstrated to dramatically influence immune reactivity of antisera to viral glycoprotein antigens. In this study, DNA sequences coding for V1/V2 domains from HIV-1 primary isolates of three subtypes (A, B, and C) were subcloned into a secretion vector and used to transfect CHO cells that are able to achieve the glycosylation of proteins. The structure of purified recombinant V1/V2 proteins was tested using two anti-V1/V2 monoclonal antibodies directed against either a linear or a conformational and glycosylation-dependent epitope (8.22.2 and 697-D). Serum or saliva of 14/82 seropositive patients with anti-V1/V2 reactivity demonstrated good recognition of the recombinant proteins. Deglycosylation of the recombinant proteins was found to increase the reactivity of the serum IgG to the clade A and C but not to clade B V1/V2 domain demonstrating that the recognition of glycosylation sites by serum IgG is clade dependent. When considering SIgA from parotid saliva, deglycosylation of all recombinant proteins tested decreased the reactivity, suggesting that glycosylation plays an important role in the recognition of V1/V2 domain target epitopes by this class of antibodies. In conclusion, these results suggest the influence of carbohydrate moieties on the specificity of the antibodies to the V1/V2 domain produced during HIV infection and the potential importance of viral glycans in vaccine responses after mucosal administration.

To better understand the pathophysiology of B cell populations-the precursors of antibody secreting cells-during chronic human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection, we examined the phenotype of circulating B cells in newly diagnosed Africans. We found that all African individuals displayed low levels of naive B cells and of memory-type CD27+ B cells, and high levels of differentiated B cells. On the other hand, HIV-infected African patients had a population of germinal center B cells (i.e. CD20+, sIgM-, sIgD+, CD77+, CD138(+/-)), which are generally restricted to lymph nodes and do not circulate unless the lymph node architecture is altered. The first observations could be linked to the tropical environment whereas the presence of germinal center B cells may be attributable to chronic exposure to HIV as it is not observed in HIV-negative African controls and HAART treated HIV-infected Europeans. It may impact the management of HIV infection in countries with limited access to HIV drugs and urges consideration for implementation of therapeutic vaccines.