10 February 2017 VOLUME 18 ISSUE 6

After Hungary's conservative Fidesz party took power in 2010, it began cutting funding for needle exchange programs....Study after study has shown that giving drug users clean needles, and collecting dirty ones, can be a cost-effective way of preventing disease and death and doesn't increase drug use or related crime. But the evidence often loses out to squeamish politicians and public misperceptions. So it was in Hungary, where they have forced closure of the nation's two largest programs.

Eight countries have joined an initiative to raise millions of dollars to replace shortfalls caused by President Donald Trump's ban on U.S.-funded groups around the world providing information on abortion. Sweden's deputy prime minister Isabella Lovin told Reuters a conference would be held on March 2 in Brussels to kick-start the funding initiative to help non-governmental organisations whose family planning projects could be affected.

Antigone Barton profiles House Appropriations subcommittees including Rep. David Price (D-N.C.) and Rep. Grace Meng (D-N.Y.), who joined the House Appropriations State and Foreign Operations Subcommittee, and Rep. Katherine Clark (D-Mass.) and Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.), who joined the House Appropriations Labor, Health, and Human Services and Education Subcommittee (2/6).

The Trump administration decided early last month to keep Obama-appointee Deborah Birx, US Global AIDS Coordinator and Special Representative for Global Health Diplomacy, in her position, at least for the time being. [But] three days after Birx was asked to stay on, Trump issued a presidential memorandum re-instating the Mexico City policy, [AKA] the 'global gag rule'....It's unclear how the new global gag rule will be implemented and how PEPFAR's support of other organizations will be affected.

HIV doctors and patients said they’re bracing for what might happen with Medicaid expansion, and any changes to the preexisting condition clauses and lifetime and annual caps on spending. Those who gained coverage through Ryan White in the states that didn’t expand Medicaid could lose it....Any cuts could help spur an uptick in the epidemic — already on the increase in gay and bisexual populations, particularly in the southern US.

During a call with investors Tuesday, James Meyers, Gilead's EVP of worldwide commercial operations, said that awareness of Truvada for PrEP is high in certain cities like San Francisco but low in others....Cities in which Gilead hopes to promote Truvada include New Orleans, Baltimore, Washington DC, Oakland, and Newark....The second part of Gilead's Truvada strategy is to press its case with payers. According to media reports, the drug costs about $1,300 per month, excluding the costs of office visits and lab work.

A systematic review of numerous studies [in low-, middle-, and high-income nations] of pregnant women with HIV [published in Lancet HIV] has found that there are higher risks of various negative pregnancy outcomes associated with starting antiretroviral treatment before rather than after conception. Such findings cannot establish, however, whether preconception treatment of HIV contributes to a raised risk of such outcomes as preterm birth or low birth weight.

When controversies arise, researchers return to the science. So at the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI) 2017, which will convene next week amid funding concerns and boycotts, researchers will be diving deep into the evidence....Said Susan Buchbinder, MD, University of California San Francisco, CROI conference committee chair: "We're at a critical juncture. We need to increase our efforts to realize the benefits of new testing technology, better therapies, and dissemination of treatment."

Some experts worry that Trump’s focus on slashing rules is wrong-headed—and possibly dangerous...[But] Matthew Kavanagh of Health GAP, which advocates for affordable HIV/AIDS drugs, says Trump was right about one thing: “The way to drive down drug prices is to import generic versions of these drugs to allow for competition. This is why AIDS drugs are available for so much cheaper outside the United States—because they encourage real market competition.”

Community organizations may be important settings for youth to get tested [for HIV], according to authors of a new report. Their study in Baltimore, Maryland, however, showed that most organizations serving youth there do not test for HIV and few can connect youth to places to get tested. “These settings are often located close to where young people live and thus may be alternate testing locations easier to access than traditional clinical settings,” lead author Dr. Arik Marcell told Reuters Health by email.

A Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine researcher has received a $2.5 million grant from Gilead Sciences...to see if two so-far separately-used AIDS treatments are even more effective when used as a pair. Lead researcher Michael Lederman, Scott R. Inkley Professor of Medicine, and colleagues will combine interleukin-2, a protein made by the body that stimulates human killer-cells, with a lab-engineered monoclonal antibody that targets HIV.

Few black, Hispanic, or white social media-using YMSM have used or plan to use oral fluid rapid HIV self-testing [and] are more interested in fingerstick than oral fluid rapid HIV self-testing despite its lack of commercial availability. Opinions identified in the study might assist future interventions to influence YMSM to use the oral fluid rapid HIV self-test.

It is becoming clear that although HIV-infected individuals can control the amount of virus in their system with antiviral treatments, there are still negative health consequences that look like premature aging, including cardiovascular disease and cognitive impairment,” says Thomas Hope, Editor-in-Chief of AIDS Research and Human Retroviruses. “[This paper and others] in the Cure issue seek a better understanding of the cause of this accelerated aging."