Seeking to prevent life-threatening side effects, the Food and Drug Administration is urging doctors to use a genetic test to screen patients before prescribing a drug widely used for H.I.V. infection and AIDS. In an advisory it is expected to issue Thursday, the agency says that patients with a particular variation in an immune system gene should not be given the drug abacavir because they are at a far higher risk of a severe allergic reaction to the drug. Abacavir, developed by GlaxoSmithKline, is sold under the name Ziagen. It is also a component of two combination pills — Trizivir and Epzicom. The recommendation for the test is part of a movement toward so-called personalized medicine, in which genetic or other tests are used to determine which drugs are best for a patient and which should be avoided.

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A human rights group is calling on Iran to release immediately or charge two doctors renowned for their work on the prevention and treatment of HIV/Aids. Human Rights Watch says the authorities have not disclosed why Arash Alaei and Kamyar Alaei were detained last month, or where they are being held. The two brothers have travelled widely outside Iran, including to the US, to take part in conferences on HIV/Aids ... The brothers are credited with getting the Iranian authorities to tackle the stigma of HIV infection and the disease Aids, in a country where sex, drug abuse and the disease itself are taboo subjects.

The US Senate has voted to overturn a rule banning HIV-positive visitors from entering the US. The US is one of only a dozen countries - including Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Libya and Russia - that ban travel and immigration for HIV-positive people. America's travel ban has been in force since 1987. The provision lifting the ban was part of a bill granting some $50bn in funding for the fight against HIV/Aids throughout the world.

The US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) has scotched plans for a large clinical trial of a candidate vaccine against HIV. The trial, called PAVE 100, would have tested whether a vaccine could help control HIV infection. The vaccine regimen was developed by the NIAID’s Vaccine Research Center and comprised a DNA vaccine containing HIV genes, with a modified cold virus carrying HIV genes as a booster. But the trial’s future has been in doubt since last September, when scientists reported disappointing results from a smaller trial of a similar vaccine.

A genetic variant peculiar to Africans substantially raises their risk of infection with HIV, according to research that suggests evolved susceptibility may be helping to drive the continent’s Aids epidemic. The 90 per cent of Africans who carry the DNA variation are 40 per cent more likely to contract HIV than those without it, after similar exposure to the virus, scientists from Britain and America have found. As the genetic change is common among people of African ancestry but virtually unknown among other ethnic groups, it could explain in part why HIV-Aids is more prevalent in sub-Saharan Africa. The United Nations estimates that 22.5 million people there are HIV-positive, more than two thirds of the global total of approximately 33.2 million. The variant, known as “Duffy-negative”, is so common in Africa that it could be responsible for about 11 per cent of the continent’s HIV burden, or 2.5 million cases, scientists said.