Prevention of HIV Transmission/acquistion through informed contraceptive choice

Supported by the subcontract the Hope laboratory will define the interaction of HIV with cervical vaginal and/or cervical mucus from women using two forms of contraceptives. We will determine the extent of which two forms of birth control affect the MSDs of labeled WT virus and Env deleted virus. Additional fluorescent nanobeads will be used in each experiment to provide an internal control. Two cohorts of 30 women will be recruited by Dr. Quayle, one cohort will use Depo-Provera contraceptive and the other cohort will use Levonorgestrel (LNg) IUD contraceptive. CMV and/or CM mucus will be collected and shipped overnight to Dr. Hope’s lab. Using deltavision deconvolution microscopes viral particles and nanobeads movements will be recorded. Analysis will be conducted using tracking programs written for IDL software. The analysis will provide mean squared displacements (msds) and alaphs (rate of change in msd/different time intervals)