STD 2018: Scientific Sessions

Session 1: Types of STDs

Sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) are infectious diseases that are transmitted from a person to another through sexual contact or blood of an infected person. The pathogens such as bacteria, virus, fungi, protozoa are responsible for the disease transmission. Bacterial STDs are Syphilis, Gonorrhoea, Chlamydia, Chancroid. Viral STDs include HIV/AIDS, Human papillomavirus, Hepatitis, Genital Herpes. Trichomoniasis is a STD caused by parasitic protozoan. Candidiasis is considered to be an fungal STD which is spread by fungus Candida albicans. Most of the sexually transmitted diseases such as viral STDs have no cure but the disease can be controlled with proper treatment while bacterial, fungal and protozoan STDs can be cured with antifungals and antibiotics.

• Bacterial STDs
• Viral STDs
• Protozoan STDs
• Fungal STDs

Session 2: Evolution of STDs

The evolution of the STD pathogens are caused by the selective pressures of the host-immune response, modern drugs, vaccines or by microbial competition. Through evolutionary phase, a pathogen can become more or less virulent. The phylogeny, epidemiology and origin studies on sexually transmitted diseases provides valuable data on the genetic transition traits in both host and pathogen. The evolutionary study of the disease-causing pathogen provides the disease transmission and diversity among the human population. The clinical epidemiologyand phylogenetic study paves way for new insights for the development of drugs and therapies against the multiple drug resistance.

• Origin
• Phylogenetics
• Epidemiology
• Diversity

Session 3: Immunopathogenesis

The immune system helps in elimination of the invading microbial pathogens in the body through a series of defense mechanism. The innate immune response of the body provides first line of defense against the pathogens which is fast and non-specific response while adaptive immune response is specific and slow. The study of immunopathogenesis allows us to explore the disease transmission process, pathogen-host interactions, immune defense against the STD pathogens. This allows us to understand the pathological condition and progression of the disease and also the genetic factors influencing the immune defense against STD transmission. The genetic factors influence can be used for the development of gene therapies that triggers immune reaction against the disease-causing pathogens in the body.

• Disease Transmission
• Pathogen-Host Interaction
• Innate Immune Response
• Adaptive Immune Response
• Genetic Factors

Session 4: Treatment Strategies

Antibiotics are used for treating the STDs caused by bacteria and protozoa. The bacterial STDs can be cured if the infection is properly diagnosed and treated. Several antibiotic resistant strains of pathogens have developed which pose a serious threat for health of the STD affected individuals. For viral STDs, there are no complete cure but progression of the disease can be controlled by antiretroviral therapies which use multiple antiretroviral drugs to decrease the disease proliferation and reduce other opportunistic infections. Gene therapy involves gene editing approaches which can provide a better and safer alternative to other existing drugs. Novel and emerging treatment strategies can provide a solution for the increasing drug resistance in the pathogens.

• Antibiotic Therapy
• Antiretroviral Combination Therapy
• Immunotherapy
• Gene Therapy

Session 5: STDs Prevention

Sexually Transmitted Diseases are transmitted from a person to another through sexual contact or blood transfusions from an infected person or needle sharing, or from mother to infant during pregnancy, labor and breastfeeding. STDs can be prevented through vaccination, screening and through promoting safer sexual behaviour, early health-care seeking behaviour, prevention and care activities. Pregnant women affected with STD must take proper treatment to prevent the vertical transmission of STD. Most STDs cannot be cured and leads to infertility, birth defects in infants, co-infections, opportunistic infections and many other health issues.

• Effective Healthcare Systems
• Vaccination
• Preconception Care
• Prenatal Care

Session 6: Advanced Diagnostic Tools

Diagnosis of STDs are done by serological assays, amplification techniques, immunological diagnosis attains accurate result of the diagnosis. Point-of-care test enables rapid screening of Syphilis and allows treatment without delay. Nucleic acid amplification tests monitor the infection trends and helps in the adaptation of treatment protocols. Drug-resistance test provides the provisions for identifying drug resistance in the STDswhich aids in overcoming the resistance and provide a better treatment. Further improvements in the diagnosis method can help in rapid and cost-effective method for screening of the STDs.

• Nucleic acid Tests
• Serological Assays
• Amplification Techniques
• Immunological Diagnosis
• Drug-Resistance Testing
• Point- of-Care Test

Session 7: Drug Development and Research

Drug development and research is the development and invention of new drugs and improvement of existing drugs. Continuous progress in drug development and research field is necessary for invention of new drugs and drug targets for STDs. Identification of the drug target is the basis of the drug development process, this can be done through various computational approaches. Gene editing technology such as CRISPR seeks to eliminate the latent as well active HIV infection in the human which would be more effective in the treatment of AIDS. Various viral inhibitors such as entry inhibitors, maturation inhibitors are designed to inhibit the replication of the virus inside the host cell.

• New Drugs and Drug Targets
• Integrase Inhibitors
• Entry Inhibitors
• Maturation Inhibitors
• Gene Editing

Session 8: Vaccines Development

A highly effective method for controlling infectious diseases is vaccination, it helps in prevention of high risk health issues. Prophylactic vaccines are those used for prevention while therapeutic vaccines are used for treatment of the specific disease. Sexually transmitted diseases are spread by pathogens such as bacteria, virus, fungi and protozoa. Many viral STDs doesn't have cure hence preventing the infection through vaccination is a best method. Vaccines are developed for Hepatitis and Human Papillomavirus (HPV) infection and for HIV and Herpes virus vaccines are being developed. Vaccination is the primary solution for eradication of sexually transmitted diseases in human.

• Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis
• Post-Exposure Prophylaxis
• Therapeutic Vaccines
• Advancements in Vaccine Technology
• HIV and Genital herpes Vaccine Development

Session 9: Nanotechnology in HIV Treatment

Nanotechnology is the science and engineering of structures that are 1–100 nm in size. Nanomedicine is a branch of medicine which is employed in preventive, diagnostic and therapeutic purposes. Using nanoparticles, effective timely release of drugs to the infected areas/organs are possible which improves specificity of drug action. HIV/AIDS patients face a major problem where the virus resides in latent reservoirs makes it hard to reach for drugs. Nanoparticles has the ability to travel through the body with less interruption which aids in effective release of drugs at HIV virus reservoirs at the specific target. Therapeutic nanoparticles have higher specificity for the drug targets which enhances the treatment efficiency and better cure for the affected individual.

• Drug Delivery System
• Drug Nanosuspension
• Therapeutic Nanomaterials
• Nanoparticle Based Vaccines

Session 10: Phytochemicals in STDs Treatment

Plants contain a wide range of substances that are used for treating chronic as well as acute infectious diseases. Many modern drugs in use have been developed from the medicinal plants which has been used by indigenous people. Phytochemicals are chemicals secreted by plants that have disease preventive properties that is used by the plants to protect itself from diseases. Antimicrobial activity of the plant sources can act as a better drug for the strains that has developed multiple drug resistance to antibiotics. Many bacterial STDs can be combated using phytochemicals produced by the medicinal plants. Pharmacological effects of the bio active compounds in the plants must be explored to produce a cure for the multiple drug resistant bacterial STDs.

• Antimicrobial Effect of Phytochemicals
• Phytoconstituents and its Effects on STDs
• Novel Therapeutic Drugs
• Multi-Drug Resistance and Phytochemical Drugs

Session 11: Drug Resistance and Mutation

The infectious pathogens mutate under certain circumstances to overcome the pressure inflicted upon them. Such organisms develop resistance to the drug in use. This proves to be a major problem in the treatment of sexually transmitted diseases. Human immunodeficiency virus has developed resistance to the antiretroviral drug provided. Hence combination antiretroviral therapies are used for treating AIDS which involves using two or more antiretroviral drugs together. Several bacterial species has also developed resistance to the antibiotics provided for the treatment. The mutation of the pathogens has led to development of drug resistance against many antibiotics and antiretroviral drugs.

• Nucleoside Reverse Transcriptase Inhibitors Resistance
• Non-Nucleoside Reverse Transcriptase Inhibitors Resistance
• Protease Inhibitors Resistance
• Antibiotic Resistance
• Antiviral Drug Resistance

Session 12: STDs and Cancer

Sexually transmitted diseases increases the risk of being affected by cancer. Among the STDs which lead to cancer, human papillomavirus infection is found to cause cervical cancer in women and penile cancer in men. It is also responsible for the development of oropharyngeal cancer in both sexes. Untreated STDs has a higher risk for leading to development of cancer. The progression of cancer in people affected by STD must be analyzed to understand the causative agents of the cancer.

• Oropharyngeal Cancer
• Cervical Cancer
• Penile Cancer
• Prostate Cancer

Session 13: Co-Infection of STDs

Gonorrhoea, chlamydia and trichomoniasis cause immune reactions which leads to inflammation that can easily be infected with HIV. Co-infection is a condition where a person actively infected with STD is infected with another STD. when a STI infected individual is prone to another infection due to immune compromise they are less able to mount a protective response against sexually transmitted pathogens. Treating co-infected individuals can be challenging and the treatment methods must be analyzed and modified to their needs.

• HIV and Gonorrhea
• HIV and Hepatitis
• HIV and Kidney disease
• HIV and Tuberculosis

Session 14: Infertility and Birth Defects

When an STD infection is left untreated in women, it may be lead to pelvic inflammatory disease (PID). Being affected by pelvic inflammatory disease may lead to infertility or ectopic pregnancy in pregnant women. When the mother is infected by STD, the fetus or new born is mostly infected. STDs during pregnancy can lead to miscarriage, birth defects including blindness, deafness, bone deformities, and intellectual disability, stillbirth, premature birth. In males, reduced fertility or infertility is most common side effect of the disease.

• Ectopic Pregnancy
• Premature Birth
• Neonatal Sepsis
• Neurological Defects

Session 15: Vertical STD Transmission

Vertical STD transmission is the process of transfer of STD from a mother to infant perinatally or postnatally. During delivery, when the baby passes through the infected canal, it can contract the STDs such as chlamydia, gonorrhoea, genital herpes from the infected mother. Syphilis and HIV can be contracted from the mother during fetus development. Postnatal transmission of the disease is possible through breastfeeding the baby. Vertical STD transmission poses serious threat to the health of the baby.

• Perinatal Transmission
• Postnatal Transmission
• Prevention of STD Transmission
• Pregnancy Care and Treatment

Session 16: Paediatric STDs

Sexually Transmitted Diseases are an important cause of morbidity in paediatric patients. The transmission occurs via transplacental, intrapartum, and postpartum exposure. When an infant contracts STD from mother, it can affect the skin, eyes, mouth, central nervous system, and can also lead to organ failure. With treatment, the chances of transmitting HIV from mother to infant is low. Proper awareness, treatment and diagnosis is needed to prevent the transmission of STDs among young people.

• Clinical Manifestation
• Early Diagnosis
• Risk Factors
• Preventive Measures

Session 17: Multimorbidities and complications

Multi-morbidities is the presence of two or more chronic diseases at the same time. Super infection or re-infection is the condition where a person with HIV infection acquires infection with the sub-type of HIV. Re-infection affects the treatment which can deteriorate the health of the affected individual. The STDs affected individual suffers from other social and emotional complications which may also have adverse effects in the health of the individual. Multiple morbidities associated with the disease causes more damage to the health as the immune system would be compromised by the STD.

• Opportunistic Infection
• Superinfection/Reinfection
• Behavioral Complications
• Social Complications

Session 18: Public Awareness and Knowledge of STDs

Educational and awareness programs must be conducted to improve the public knowledge about the sexually transmitted diseases. People affected by sexually transmitted diseases have dramatically increased, millions of people are affected by the disease due to lack of awareness. Public must be aware about the impact of STDs on the lives of the affected people and the importance of preventing, screening and treating STDs. Poor knowledge about the STDs lead to increased health issues such as ectopic pregnancies, infertility and other complications. STDs are a major health issue that affects mostly young people, not only in developing countries but in developed countries also.

• Impact of STDs
• STD Screening
• Risk Awareness
• Prevention Education
• Community Awareness

 

No more ‘sledgehammer’: As gonorrhea grows resistant to antibiotics, researchers look to bespoke treatments

With antibiotic resistance on the rise, the days when doctors and clinics could rely on one treatment to cure all gonorrhea cases may be waning.

In fact, clinicians may find that some of their patients respond best to drugs of the past. But how will they know which patients?

To answer that question, a handful of researchers and companies are trying to develop rapid, point-of-care diagnostics that would signal which drugs work for a given patient and permit clinicians to tailor treatment to the bacterial strain. A future, in other words, of bespoke treatment, in which a greater variety of drugs are used to treat a very common sexually transmitted disease — potentially prolonging the utility of several antibiotics.

“It would allow for smarter medicine,” Dr. Jeffrey D. Klausner, a professor of infectious diseases medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles, told STAT. “Right now, we’re treating gonorrhea with a sledgehammer, we’re treating everything with the same exact regime. And it’s not a surprise that the organism will become resistant to what we’re currently using.”

Klausner has collaborated with several companies working in this area but has not received payment from the companies. The companies have made contributions to UCLA, he said.

Gonorrhea is spread by sexual contact, and infection can occur in the genitals, the rectum, and the throat. The World Health Organization estimates that about 78 million people a year are infected with gonorrhea; roughly 820,000 of those infections occur in the United States.

Left untreated, gonorrhea can cause pelvic inflammatory disease and infertility in women and sterility in men. Infection increases a person’s risk of contracting HIV. Babies born to an infected woman can develop blindness.

From a treatment point of view, the ideal regimen for curing gonorrhea is an oral antibiotic — and was long the standard of care. But gonorrhea is a wily bacterium, adept at learning tricks that allow it to evade the power of antibiotics. One after another, the available drugs have started to fail.

For several years, the recommended regimen for gonorrhea has been a dual-therapy approach, the thinking being that it is harder for resistance to develop to a drug combination than to a single drug. The current recommended therapy is one injection of the antibiotic ceftriaxone followed by a multiday course of azithromycin. But even that approach is starting to show signs of weakness.

At the same time, there has been a belief that, even as medicine has moved on, there is life left in the drugs that have been abandoned — if you could figure out in whom they would work.

“We’ve been treating empirically and a lot of times ignoring the fact that the majority of organisms, the majority of infections we’re seeing, are actually fully susceptible to the old drugs,” said Fred Tenover, vice president for scientific affairs at Cepheid Inc., a California-based maker of molecular diagnostics.

“So now we have to have a change in philosophy and say: You know what? Now it’s time to go and do what we do for every other infection, which is actually define what the best therapeutic is up front.”

Cepheid is exploring the idea of developing such a test, Tenover said. “We’re trying to figure out what it would look like and what it would cost,” he said. “This is not in our pipeline officially. It’s something we’re looking at, something we haven’t committed to, but we have figured out how to make the assay.”

Other smaller companies are in the hunt. SpeeDx, an Australian-American firm, has a test in development that it hopes will receive licensing approval in Europe this autumn. The company is currently conducting a clinical trial in the United States in hopes of with the goal of filing for approval with the Food and Drug Administration.

The test both diagnoses gonorrhea and indicates whether the infecting strain can be treated with Cipro, said CEO Colin Denver. It currently would need to be processed by a central lab, but the plan is to develop the assay as a point-of-care test that could be used in a clinic or doctor’s office.

Shield Diagnostics, of Santa Clara, Calif., has a similar idea in mind. The company has a proprietary testing platform; CEO Fred Turner said it will roll out its first test this fall. The test can diagnose gonorrhea and ascertain if the strain is susceptible to Cipro.

For now, it is not a point-of-care test; that may be three or four years down the road, Turner said. In the meantime, Shield will process the tests in its own laboratories. Turner said the testing will likely take two to three days. Ideally, over time, both companies hope their assays will be expanded to give a broader resistance profile, one that indicates whether other drugs would be effective.

“Our ultimate goal is to have clinicians utilize a test-and-treat algorithm so that you don’t have to use these empiric therapies,” Denver said.

A patient would come into a clinic and specimens to test would be taken. While he or she is seeing the doctor, the test would be run. Within an hour or so, the doctor would know whether a single dose of Cipro or cefixime (also an oral drug) would do, or whether the ceftriaxone-azithromycin combination would be the better option.

“It’s like personalized medicine — your individual infection treated with the antibiotic you know is going to work,” Denver said.

But in order for these types of tests to be truly useful, they’ll need to be affordable and produce a rapid answer, said Dr. Lindley Barbee, an assistant professor of infectious diseases at the University of Washington and medical director of the Public Health – Seattle & King County STD Clinic. Not a day or two later, but while the person was in the clinic.

Many clinics that treat sexually transmitted infections are government funded, Barbee noted: “You have to get the cost low enough to make it worthwhile.”

That’s clearly a factor that has slowed development of these tests. “If you say to somebody who’s paying $10 for this test now, ‘Well, I can better define your therapy but it’s going to cost $17 a test, not $10 a test,’ that may be beyond the reach of a lot of public health clinics or STI clinics. And that’s probably what it would take,” said Cepheid’s Tenover.

“To date the return on investment has not been positive enough to make these commercially available,” he said. “That may be changing. And I think as we talk more and more about the spread of superbug gonorrhea, people may be more and more interested in doing this. But in the past there hasn’t been a market for these types of tests.”

Source: https://www.statnews.com/2018/07/17/gonorrhea-grows-resistant-to-antibiotics-researchers-look-to-bespoke-treatments/

Gonorrhea researchers identify novel route to vaccine, new antibiotic

Researchers have identified a protein that powers the virulence of the bacteria that causes gonorrhea, opening the possibility of a new target for antibiotics and, even better, a vaccine.

The findings, published today in PLOS Pathogens, are especially important since the microbe, Neisseria gonorrhoeae, is considered a "superbug" because of its resistance to all classes of antibiotics available for treating infections.

Gonorrhea, a sexually transmitted disease that results in 78 million new cases worldwide each year, is highly damaging if untreated or improperly treated.

It can lead to endometritis, pelvic inflammatory disease, ectopic pregnancy, epididymitis and infertility. Babies born to infected mothers are at increased risk of blindness.

"The infections very often are silent," said Oregon State University researcher Aleksandra Sikora. "Up to 50 percent of infected women don't have symptoms, but those asymptomatic cases can still lead to some very severe consequences for the patient's reproductive health, miscarriage or premature delivery."

The need for better antibiotic therapy, and a vaccine, is pressing. N. gonorrhoeae strains resistant to the last effective treatment options have emerged, and failures in treatment are occurring.

Sikora and her research team at the OSU/OHSU College of Pharmacy and Ann Jerse's lab at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, Maryland, collaborated to discover a novel lipoprotein that N. gonorrhoeae uses to defeat the body's first line of innate immune defense.

The body relies on enzymes known as lysozymes that, as their name suggests, thwart bacteria by causing their cell wall to lyse, or break apart. Lysozymes are abundant both in epithelial cells, which make up the tissue on the outside of organs and the inside of body cavities, and in the phagocytic cells that protect the body by ingesting foreign particles and bacteria.

In turn, many gram-negative bacteria -- characterized by their cell envelope that includes a protective outer membrane -- have developed ways of defeating lysozymes. Prior to the work by Sikora's team, however, only one lysozyme-fighting protein had been discovered in the Neisseria genus.

Now that new targets have been identified, they can be explored as bullseye candidates for new antibiotics or a vaccine -- if the lysozyme inhibitor can itself be inhibited, then the bacteria's infection-causing ability is greatly reduced.

Sikora and her collaborators named the new protein SliC, short for surface-exposed lysozyme inhibitor of c-type lysozyme.

Studying SliC's function in culture as well as in a gonorrhea mouse model -- mice were infected with N. gonorrhoeae, then checked for SliC expression at one, three and five days -- researchers determined the protein was essential to bacterial colonization because of its anti-lysozyme role.

"This is the first time an animal model has been used to demonstrate a lysozyme inhibitor's role in gonorrhea infection," Sikora said. "Together, all of our experiments show how important the lysozyme inhibitor is. This is very exciting."

Source: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/07/180705143834.htm

Abstract submission for the conference STD 2018 held at Toronto, Canada on August 20-21, 2018 is welcome!! Submit your abstract here: https:/std-hiv-aids.cmesociety.com/abstract-submission