“Red Lounge” tributes HIV/AIDS victims

Main Campus kicked off World AIDS Week and observed World AIDS Day – which raise awareness and celebrate achievements in the fight against HIV/AIDS – with the fourth-annual Red Lounge in the Student Center Underground Dec. 1.

Black and red tablecloths covered tables in the middle of the room, and a buffet table by the entrance offered attendees an assortment of food and beverages. Panels from the National AIDS Memorial Quilt were on display against the back wall of the Underground and served as a tribute to those lives lost to the HIV/AIDS epidemic.

“It’s very moving and a very reflective experience,” Kate Schaeffer, coordinator for Judicial Affairs in Residential Life, said of the quilt.

Schaeffer was a part of the committee, which included Residential Life, Temple’s Health Education Awareness Resource Team and student workers, that sponsored the Red Lounge, as well as other activities for Temple’s World AIDS Week.

Schaeffer enjoyed the teamwork and administrative effort to raise awareness and support for the HIV/AIDS epidemic through events like Red Lounge.

“We as a community can use education and awareness about the disease itself and learn from the people living with it,” Schaeffer said. “We can use this event to approach [HIV/AIDS] as a reflective, educational and awareness celebration toward the movement and strides made to find a cure and make this something livable for the people dealing with it.”

The event consisted of student performances and guest speakers to commemorate World AIDS Day and raise awareness about the epidemic.

Arielle Catron, a senior women’s studies major, hosted Red Lounge. She said she was pleased with the turnout of the event, as well as the speakers and student performers.

“It was my first time performing, and it was the same for many other students, and it was a safe atmosphere to try something out,” Catron said.

Three Temple students performed Bhangra, a traditional Indian dance performed at festivals throughout the year, to commemorate the way HIV/AIDS affects India. Dana Blechman, a junior Spanish major, performed the song “3,000 Miles,” and dedicated the song to those suffering or affected by HIV/AIDS. Cody Kleppertknoop, a junior social work major, did an Irish step dance as tribute.

A group of female students known as “The Ladies of Elegance,” also step danced and shouted out facts and figures relating to HIV/AIDS, including “six in 10 African-American females in Philadelphia are infected with HIV,” and “in 2009, AIDS increased by 95 percent in the United States.”

The part of the event the audience paid special attention to was the two guest speakers, Patrick McGee, a close friend of HEART Program Director Dina Stonberg, and Temple class of 2000 alum and Stonberg’s former student, Danielle Parks, director of Women’s Anonymous Test Site.

“Even if you aren’t affected by HIV, you are still affected by it,” Parks said. “We’ve all got to realize this.”
McGee told the audience his story of how he contracted HIV in 1982, after being sexually assaulted at a fraternity party on his college campus.

“I’m in my 27th year of living with the virus, and I look damn good,” McGee said.

He then informed the audience of the importance of getting tested and that before that comes prevention and protection, which he says includes education and awareness and safe sexual practices.
“You need to educate yourselves about the subject because people never think it’s going to happened to them,” McGee told the audience. “Trust me, that’s what I thought, and I’ve lost 11 friends in six months to this disease.”

Joshua Fernandez can be reached at josh@temple.edu.

University dedicates first World AIDS Week

Several campus offices collaborated last week to kick off a new tradition of HIV/AIDS awareness.

In honor of World AIDS Day, student organizations on Main Campus dedicated a full week to HIV/AIDS awareness and prevention programs last week.

Temple’s first World AIDS Week started as an idea from Kate Schaffer, the coordinator of Judicial Affairs in the Office of University Housing and Residential Life, to bring sections of the AIDS Memorial Quilt to Main Campus.

Comprised of 3-by-6-foot sections created by friends, family and loved ones of AIDS victims, the quilt is the largest ongoing community art endeavor in the world and serves as a poignant memorial to a disease that has many faces and even more stories.

Schaeffer said several Temple organizations and departments participate in HIV/AIDS awareness programs year-round. It wasn’t until this year, however, that a unified week was organized, rather than a series of disconnected programs.

Temple’s AIDS Week began with the viewing of the quilt and was followed by free HIV testing, sponsored by HEART, the Health Education and Awareness Resource Team, as well as various HIV/AIDS awareness organizations from around the city.

As part of AIDS Week, HEART program director Dina Stonberg hosted “Know Your Status Jeopardy,” a game intended to stress the importance of knowing your HIV status as the first line of prevention. Earlier in the week, the names of people killed by AIDS were read in the Underground at the Howard Gittis Student Activities Center.

Since HIV/AIDS came to American consciousness, the coverage of the effects of the disease on the population has steadily fallen, although the rates of AIDS diagnosis started to fall between 1993 and 1998, since 2000 the rates have stayed constant. Considering the technological advances in medicine and research, however, the rates seem high to activists.

The life of HIV, the virus that can cause AIDS, is complex. HIV is a highly variable disease, and there can be many different strains even within a single infected person.

Every person reacts to the virus differently, and for some, survival stories could be out of reach.

Today, according to the Centers for Disease Control one in five of the 1 million people living with HIV in the United States is unaware of his or her status. HIV is a preventable disease.

Mamaye Mesfin can be reached at mamaye.mesfin@temple.edu.

HIV/AIDS ignorance is an epidemic in itself

The misconception that gays contract HIV/AIDS more often than heterosexuals still exists in today’s society, regardless of published statistics and research that clearly state that this is not the case.

As I watched a lanky student poke his nose around the rainbow of condoms sold at Temple’s Health Education Awareness Resource Team, I thought he, as a safe-sex practitioner, was probably a sensible guy – until he opened his mouth.

“Get tested? No,” I overheard him say to his friend waiting in line during HEART’s rapid HIV testing session last Friday. “I don’t have gay cancer.”

While there’s no such thing as “gay cancer,” I do believe that kid has another type of tumor: ignorance.
The act of sex – straight or gay – isn’t what “infects” people with AIDS; the HIV pathogen is.

“Pathogens are living organisms, and their purposes are to multiply and survive,” said Dr. Claire Haignere, an associate professor of public health. “They need a host to do that, and they don’t care about what the color, creed or sexual orientation is of the host.”

Haignere said it was purely coincidental that in the early 1980s, when AIDS first became noticed as an epidemic of a disease, that the first cases of what would become known as AIDS were identified in gay men.

“Not having a name for it or not knowing what the pathogen was, the media began calling it the gay plague,” Haignere said. “The fact of the matter is, it’s sort of a historical fluke in the United States because in the rest of the world, it’s known as a heterosexual disease.”

According to the Philadelphia Department of Public Health’s HIV/AIDS Epidemiological Update, 51.1 percent of new diagnosed incidents of HIV in 2007 were contracted through heterosexual contact. Only 29.2 percent of diagnosed cases were contracted by men who have sex with men.

“I think the stigma has a lot to do with our overall views on sexuality in general in this country and in this city,” said Natasha Davis, an assistant professor of public health who has been working with HIV-positive people since the 1990s. “[In the early 1980s], the media did a good job of painting the picture of AIDS as young, white gay men. Even then, that definitely wasn’t the case.”

While the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report that men who have sex with men account for 53 percent of people living in the U.S. with HIV/AIDS, it also reports high numbers among other demographics.

According to the CDC, blacks account for 51 percent of new HIV/AIDS diagnoses in terms of race and ethnicity. Age-wise, 53 percent of new cases are in the 30- to 49-year-old age bracket.

“In terms of new-case rates, they’re highest among the people who don’t know much [about HIV/AIDS],” Haignere said. “The new incident rate is decreasing in men who have sex with men because [members of the] LGBT community are educating themselves.”

“Young people at Temple who don’t believe or know that this isn’t a gay disease and don’t think they’re at risk, they’re at the greatest risk,” Haignere said.

Regardless if you’re someone who actually thinks AIDS is a “gay cancer” or if you’ve been too busy finishing your capstone to care, one thing is for sure: HIV does not have a sexual orientation, and you’re dead wrong if you think otherwise.

“HIV and AIDS are not just in Africa or among men who have sex with men,” Haignere said. “It’s in the United States. It’s in Philadelphia. And it’s at Temple. And you can’t tell who has it.”

Maria Zankey can be reached at maria.zankey@temple.edu.

Drugs don’t equal safe sex

The swine flu might be the current “epidemic” on everyone’s mind, but there is another epidemic that won’t go away in the near future.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates nearly 2.7 million new HIV infections occur globally each year.

In an effort to come up with new prevention strategies, the CDC is sponsoring clinical trials of pre-exposure prophylaxis, also known as PrEP, an antiretroviral drug used to prevent HIV infection for high-risk individuals. The problem is users are not simultaneously using condoms.

Instead of using the drug as an added measure in the event that a condom breaks, many gay men are omitting the use of condoms altogether, using PrEP by itself.  

As a gay man, I find this to be completely and utterly irresponsible of people in the gay population who are ripping apart safe sex practices to protect us from this horrible virus.  

Tenofovir disoproxil fumarate, also known as tenofovir or its commercial brand name, Viread, was approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 2001 as a preventative measure for HIV, and the combination pill, emtricitabine, was approved in 2004.

More than 200,000 HIV-infected people worldwide have used antiretroviral drugs, and although clinical trials are ongoing, they seem to be working.

But Dina Stonberg, coordinator of the Health Education Awareness Resource Team, said there is a large problem with PrEPs.

“We know the mechanics of how [PrEPs] work, but trials are still ongoing, and people can still get infected,” Stonberg said. “They are not easy to take, and they are expensive. Whose insurance is going to pay for them?” 

Despite the “no glove, no love” philosophy of sex, people are still getting infected, and a pill that gives people the excuse not to wear condoms is contributing to rising HIV infection rates, despite the fact that research has made significant strides in HIV/AIDS awareness.

Stonberg said rising infection rates are affected by the way people view HIV/AIDS as “a maintainable disease that you just take medication for.”

“People aren’t too scared of it anymore and they don’t think about how horrible the medications are to take,” she said.

Gay men underestimate the effects of HIV/AIDS.

 “Young gay men now don’t think about what it was like for gay men in the ‘80s,” Stonberg said. “As they grow to be more mature, the next generation doesn’t have that memory.” 

Aside from still being at risk for HIV infection, gay men should not use PrEPs alone. The drug doesn’t protect against other sexually transmitted infections. This is what condoms are for. 

It doesn’t matter if you’re gay – everyone is at risk when it comes to HIV.

The only way we can truly prevent this monstrosity is to remain aware and have open communication with sexual partners and doctors.

Nothing, not even drugs like tenofovir or Viread, is fool proof. 

Joshua Fernandez can be reached at josh.fernandez@temple.edu.

Art therapy spreads HIV/AIDS awareness

Haven Youth Center is the light at the end of the tunnel. It’s a place where HIV-positive youth feel accepted.

Located on the second floor of an old warehouse, the center offers a private atmosphere for youth who drop in and out of the center.

Inside, Haven is alive in color and spirit. The strokes of brushes pick up a kind of rhythm, followed by the smell of paint. People gather around white walls that become colored by the flowing motion of a hand. One of the new things happening at Haven is the painting of an art mural painting to spread awareness of HIV to the youth.

What comes out of the art therapy project is self-evaluation, which allows the youths infected with HIV to accept themselves.

Art therapist Serena Saunders understands how art can be a great therapeutic tool in dealing with people that are alienated.

“Art is an internal expression and a good form of therapy that allows the youth to internally express their feelings, who they are,” Saunders said.

Haven steps up to provide support and services to the youth infected or affected by HIV. Many of the programs at the center provide HIV testing, support groups and an art therapy project. The project uses art to help youth express their feelings of isolation, depression and alienation in an otherwise stigmatized society.

Zoning out from the everyday struggles of life, the youth at Haven are very involved in painting the mural. The expressions on the kids’ faces when they come in are bright and optimistic.

“Having a visual color is nice to them, they can come in, turn the music on, grab a brush and physically get involved,” Saunders said.

Philadelphia is a city of murals, but what makes this one different from the rest is the awareness about HIV. Through meetings with the mural artist and teams, the mural represents people who are universally affected by the virus. Many of Haven’s youth come from hospitals in the Philadelphia region.

William Brawner, founder and executive director of Haven Youth Center, is an HIV/AIDS activist determined to spread the word about HIV.

“We make sure they take care of themselves as far as the disease is concern, but [our] biggest concern is to make sure they are productive citizens,” Brawner said.

As a person living with the virus, Brawner is familiar with the challenges young people go through. He maintains a strong, optimistic and healthy view for the kids at Haven.

The human interaction among the youth is a great sense of moral support and understanding, which helps them deal with their statuses.

Haven has a computer lab and college achievement programs to assist students with their academics. All the students’ achievements are acknowledged and put up on a wall.

The youth at Haven get a great sense of empowerment, as they gain security and feel optimistic about their futures. They learn how to live better lives physically and mentally and how to take care of their health.

“We just don’t focus on the disease,” Brawner said. “We track our kids, make sure they are doing better in schools, doing better with their doctors, doing better with their families, doing better with depression or whatever else they have going on.”

Sandra Rollins can be reached at sandra.rollins@temple.edu.

Grant helps team study effects of HIV

Biology chair Shohreh Amini has received $6 million in a five-year grant from the National Institutes of Health to further her research on the connection between HIV and the central nervous system.

Amini received $7 million from NIH in 2002 for her research on HIV-induced neurological abnormalities.

Despite the economy’s downward spiral into recession, Amini was confident her research team would receive the grant.

“We had a good track record, and that really helped us,” Amini said. “We had proven we were really productive.”

NIH looks at three components when awarding a group grant. Grant proposals must align with NIH’s mission to better public health, include thorough investigation and advance research findings from prior studies.

Amini and her team have received a PO1 grant, which requires at least three individuals to be considered a team of research rather than individual research. The money will help fund investigative studies for the 15-member team and the facilities they intend to use over the next five years.

“A lot of people who were part of this [research] depended on the grant,” Amini said. “We were really hoping we’d get it. I was pleasantly surprised.”

Amini and her team became interested in studying HIV when they noticed many of their patients were infected with the virus.

Proficient in biology and neurosciences, Amini and her team were determined to find a correlation between HIV and neurological responses. The team used viruses as its model to determine the relationship between viral central nervous system diseases to molecular events.

Neurological diseases affect the brain, spinal cord and nerve systems throughout the body, making it hard for a person to function correctly.

“We wanted to find out if there was a neuroscience relation [to HIV] to begin with,” Amini said. “We are looking for target markers of the disease to be able to say this is what follows the progression of the disease.”

Discovering target markers in relation to HIV would help researchers foresee neurological abnormalities such as dementia caused by the disease inside the central nervous system. Once these key markers are found, Amini and her team hope to design methods to regulate the disease.

Kylee Mesner can be reached at kylee.mesner@temple.edu.

Researchers find possible source of HIV progression to AIDS

Temple researchers may have discovered the monocyte subset leading to the advancement of HIV to AIDS.

Monocytes, white cells in the bloodstream, help the immune system to fight against infections. Once monocytes leave circulation, they go into tissues, where they begin to differentiate into macrophases. Macrophases perform various jobs, including cleaning up debris in case of injury and containing immune stimulatory properties.

Just like monocytes, not all macrophases are the same, varying based on the environment they are in, and some of the factors that are secreted by infectious cells.

Within the HIV study, Temple researchers found a monocyte subset with two surface markers – CD+16, a cluster of differentiation that provides antibodies, and CD+163, an iron cluster containing molecules working towards protection from injury.

According to the March issue of AIDS Research and Human Retroviruses, this monoctye subset may be in direct correlation with the progression of HIV to AIDS.

“We looked at a single time point in patients, and we saw that this correlation exists,” said Dr. Jay Rappaport, one of the three researchers who oversaw the study.

Rappaport said when the HIV viral load increases, so does the subset of monoctyes.

“The higher the viral load, the higher the fraction of this subset becomes,” he said. “It becomes more predominant.”

As the monocyte subset begins to increase, a person begins to lose their CD+4 T-cells. CD+4 T-cells are crucial in helping to maintain the immune system.

“The lower the CD+4 count, the higher the fraction of these cells becomes,” Rappaport said.

The study, authored by Dr. Tracy Fischer-Smith of Temple, first began with a group of monkeys containing the Simian Immunodeficiency Virus, the primate version of AIDS. From there, 25 patients from Temple’s Comprehensive HIV program – 18 of them with the virus and seven without – were chosen at random by Dr. Ellen Tedaldi.

“In order to see if this predicts the rate of production to disease, the next step would be to do a longitudinal study and to follow those patients overtime,” Rapport said. “We think that it could be something that could allow you to forecast the progression of the disease. Right now, there’s very little out there that can do that.”

With the use of microarray technology, the longitudinal study will examine the gene expression profile cells, and how they function in the context of the immune system. This information could prove that the more monocytes a person has, the more prone they are to the HIV progression to AIDS.

Temple’s Office of the Provost has awarded Dr. Ellen Tedaldi with a seed grant to further explore the study of patients with HIV. The research study will include a five-faculty member staff led by Dr. Trisha Acri, covering up to one-year of research.

Kylee Messner can be reached at kylee.messner@temple.edu.

Image courtesy of Nature.com

HIV speaker creates awareness

Editor’s Note: The speaker’s name in this article has been changed to protect his identity.

Twenty-five years ago, John Smith went to a frat party not knowing it would change his life.

Three guys attacked and raped him while he was drunk. That night was the last night Smith ever drank alcohol. It was also the night he became HIV positive.

For the past six years he has been traveling to inform people about HIV and AIDS using his own experiences. His goal is to educate people the proper way and to combat the wrong information that people receive from the media. On Tuesday, Sept. 18, the Temple Health Empowerment Office and the Honors Program welcomed Smith to tell his story.

“What I say today is very close to my heart,” Smith said, standing before 35 people in the 1300 residence hall classroom. “I have AIDS.”

Smith has lived with HIV for 25 years. When he tested positive, his doctor told him he had about two years to live. He did not receive treatment when he was first diagnosed; instead he decided to do all the things he always wanted.

He ended up with $30,000 worth of credit card debt but was still alive. In 1995, he reached his low in health. A healthy person usually has a T-cell count of 1000; in 1995 Smith’s T-cell count was 33. That year the “cocktail,” a combination of various drugs, appeared as a solution to fighting HIV and AIDS. Smith was put on this treatment and his health began to improve.

Now his T-cell count is 833. He considers himself to be one of the lucky ones. He never had an opportunistic infection, and even when his T-cell count was low, his immune system still continued to function.

“We are not here to judge other people of the choices they make,” Smith said he passed out bags of candy.

The candy game was an exercise Smith used to illustrate his point about people and choices. He passed out two bags of candy and instructed students to pick at least one piece, but we could have as much as we wanted. Different candies meant different things, but we did not find out the meanings until after we made our choices.

Sugarless gum stood for sex with condoms, while a Twix bar stood for prostitution. Fast Breaks represented intravenous drugs, while Snickers symbolized watching people have sex and laughing. The point of the exercise was to illustrate that people should never judge others and their choices. The game also showed Smith’s sense of humor and boldness.

“I’ll make you laugh and compare it to things you’ll remember,” Smith said as he explained how the HIV virus works and how it is transmitted.

Smith stressed the point that HIV is a preventable illness. He discussed the four bodily fluids that transmit the disease: blood, semen, vaginal fluids and breast milk. He also explained in layman’s terms how the virus infects the body and eventually takes over. He said he’s satisfied if everyone walks out of the lecture knowing at least the four bodily fluids of transmission.

“If I could do it over I would have skipped the frat party,” Smith said. “I would never choose to have AIDS, but if I didn’t have it I wouldn’t be doing what I do and I think what I do is important.”

Smith has given many lectures and has volunteered at different HIV testing sites as well as different HIV and AIDS conferences. He is more blunt and open than most traditional speakers, but he manages to get his point across especially with college students. After the lecture, many students went up to him and personally thanked him for coming and speaking.

THEO and the Honors Program held this event in order to bring about awareness to safe sex practices and HIV prevention.

“Students are bombarded with health information,” said THEO coordinator Dina Stonberg. “I think his programs really make a difference.”

Temple is now on the forefront of HIV and AIDS awareness. Temple is one of the first colleges in the country to now have rapid HIV testing, which means that after getting tested, students can get results in 20-40 minutes for free. THEO also holds a class in January called AIDS in Society, which is also rare for most colleges.

“The whole idea was putting a real face to the disease that isn’t typically seen in the media,” said Amanda Neuber, an Honors academic advisor. “What I wanted people to realize is that there are people living with HIV on campus that you would have never have thought had anything wrong with them.”

Rebecca Hale can be reached at rebecca.hale@temple.edu.