Review & comment

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  Advances in prevention of GVHD

  Joseph Leventhal, Yiming Huang, Hong Xu, Idona Goode, Suzanne Ildstad

  Complications arising during allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation include onset of graft-versus-host disease (GVHD); here Joseph Leventhal et al. review the promising advances made with cell-based therapies which can potentially prevent GVHD and promote engraftment.

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  Tropical disease: targeting nutrition

  Andrew Hall, Yaobi Zhang, Chad MacArthur, Shawn Baker

  Neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) are prevalent in malnourished populations and are exacerbated by undernutrition; Andrew Hall and colleagues propose that the efficacy of NTD control programs can be increased by including nutritional interventions.

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  Gene variations link to behavior?

  Martin Brune

  Martin Brune discusses gene-environment interactions as applied to psychiatric conditions, and contrasts it with the diathesis-stress perspective on environmental effects, thus exploring these implications with regard to polymorphisms.

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  New directions for HIV inhibition

  Peter Quashie, Richard Sloan, Mark Wainberg

  Replication of HIV can be inhibited by viral integrase enzyme inhibitors, and the therapeutic potential of these compounds, as well as the development of novel antiviral drugs are reviewed here by Mark A Wainberg and colleagues.

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  Tat protein enhances HCV infection

  Paul Rider, Fenyong Liu

  Rider and Liu comment on research in BMC Immunology about enhanced replication of hepatitis C virus (HCV) by the tat protein of HIV-1, and discuss how these findings can lead to better treatment strategies in co-infected patients, and so prevent progress of HCV-related liver disease.