Treating HIV and AIDS patients earlier using early antiretroviral therapy might be effective, a U.S. researcher told the International AIDS Society on Monday.

Scott Hammer a Columbia University researcher and a member of the International AIDS Society-USA Panel indicated that new data he had analyzed in the field over the last two years suggests initiating therapy before CD4 cell count declines to less than 350/L

- A new report released by the Center for Disease Control says that the rate of annual new H.I.V. infections in the United States are 40 percent higher than previously thought.

The study concludes that the infection rate is 56,300 per year as opposed to the 40,000 a year that was thought to have been the average rate for the last several years. The new findings, experts say, are not necessarily due to more infections, but are a result of improved tests and a more accurate and new statistical methods

Women ages 19 through 64 should be routinely tested for HIV. That's the new recommendation released Thursday by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG).

In a formal committee opinion published in the August issue of Obstetrics and Gynecology, the college said obstetrician-gynecologists play an important role in promoting HIV screening for their patients under the recommendations by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)

President George Bush on Wednesday approved $48 billion for fighting AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis around the world for next five years.

The amount authorized for the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), the successful U.S. global AIDS program, is $18 billion more than what Bush had requested. The measure will triple funding for these three diseases

While there have been significant gains in preventing new HIV infections in different countries, the epidemic is far from over in any part of the world, according to a United Nations report.

The 2008 report on the global AIDS epidemic, produced by the Joint U.N .Program on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), released on Tuesday, is the most comprehensive review of the epidemic to date with 147 countries reporting data on HIV