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Washington, D.C., Officials Expand STI Testing Program To All Public High Schools
Washington, D.C., officials are planning to make testing for sexually transmitted infections available at all public high schools in the coming school year, adding D.C. to a growing list of cities that test students for STIs, the Washington Post reports. All 50 states and the district allow minors older than age 12 to be tested for STIs without parental consent.The new program requires all students to attend a lecture about STIs, after which they are escorted into restroom areas in groups of 15 to 20. They are then given paper bags with urine collection cups and go into the stalls, at which point they can decide whether to provide a sample. All students return the paper bags, regardless of whether they provided samples. Students give a password and can call a week later to receive their confidential results and, if necessary, treatment at the school or an STI clinic, which is paid for by the city. The district first offered the program two years ago at two charter schools, and eight high schools were included during the past school year.A 2007 study by the D.C. public school system found that 60% of high school students and 30% of middle school students reported having sex. According to the study, 20% of high school students reported having sex with four or more partners and 12% of middle school students reported having three or more partners.According to the D.C. Department of Health, the program at eight high schools last year found that 13% of 3,000 students tested positive for an STI, most commonly chlamydia or gonorrhea. Fifty percent of the chlamydia and gonorrhea cases in the district are among teenagers.According to the D.C. Appleseed Center for Law and Justice, the new program is an important step toward curbing the district"s HIV/AIDS rate, which is among the highest in the U.S. Walter Smith, executive director of D.C. Appleseed, said, "If 13% of these students are testing positive for [STIs], those same kids could get HIV," adding, "A lot needs to be done to get the message out to the schools, ... and this very high [STI] rate is an indication that what we"ve been doing is not effective" (Fears/Hernandez, Washington Post, 8/5).
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ANA And International Association Of Forensic Nurses Co-Publish First Standards For Forensic Nursing
The American Nurses Association (ANA) and the International
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Language Use Decreases In Young Children And Caregivers When Television Is On, Study Finds
June 1, 2009: In a new study, young children and their adult caregivers uttered fewer vocalizations, used fewer words and engaged in fewer conversations when in the presence of audible television. The population-based study is the first of its kind completed in the home environment, guided by lead researcher Dimitri A. Christakis, MD, MPH, director of the Center for Child Health, Behavior and Development at Seattle Children"s Research Institute and professor of pediatrics at the University of Washington School of Medicine. "Audible Television and Decreased Adult Words, Infant Vocalizations, and Conversational Turns" was published in the June 2009 issue of Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine.
Cardiovascular

Why Retroviruses Such As HIV Love Their Neighbors

Retroviruses such as HIV that are already within cells are much more easily transmitted when they are next to uninfected cells than if they are floating free in the bloodstream. "Cell-to-cell transmission is a thousand times more efficient, which is why diseases such as AIDS are so successful and so deadly," said Walther Mothes, associate professor of microbial pathogenesis at the Yale School of Medicine. "And because the retroviruses are already in cells, they are out of reach of the immune system." Now, Yale University researchers led by Mothes and Jing Jin, a postdoctoral associate in Mothes" lab, have made movies of viral activity within cells that help explain why cell-to-cell transmission is so efficient and provide potential targets for a new generation of AIDS drugs. Using imaging technology that can track individual particles of virus in real time, the Yale team discovered that infected cells can specifically produce viruses at the point of contact between cells, they report in the July 27 edition of the open access journal PLoS Biology. Ten times more of these particles are found at these cellular poles than elsewhere at the surface of cells, the researchers report. The ability of infected cells to specifically produce viruses only at cell-cell interfaces explains how viruses spread so efficiently, they note. The researchers also identified a possible weakness in the transmission chain. The team found that viruses express a sticky protein that docks with uninfected cells and then attracts viral assembly to these sites. If this adhesion molecule lacked a "cytoplasmic tail," then the viral particles did not assemble at the jumping off point between cells. Mothes expects many more such targets will be identified as scientists work out the mechanics of cell-to-cell transmission. "We are just opening the door to this whole process," Mothes said. "It is a black box, and many, many cellular factors have to be involved in making this happen. Our hope is that somewhere down the road we will have a completely new anti-viral strategy based on targeting cell-to-cell transmission." Nathan M. Sherer was another Yale-affiliated author of the paper. The work was funded by the National Cancer Institute and amfAR, The Foundation for AIDS Research. Citation: PLoS Biology, July 27, 2009 Yale University


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