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12 JUNE 2020 VOLUME 22 ISSUE 23

Media Coverage

  • New PrEP Injection Testament to HIV Research and Community Partnership

    An injectable form of pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) is welcomed and exciting development in the midst of COVID-19. It has been almost a month since the news came out and it still brings a lot of pleasure for the field. The search for expanding HIV prevention options to choose from has yielded yet another success through research. This is another form of PrEP and is different from the daily PrEP pill we’ve come to know.

    June 12, 2020
    PrEP
    Health-e News

  • Large HIV Testing Gap Between Rich and Poor Living in African Countries

    Socioeconomic inequalities in the uptake of HIV testing have persisted despite the massive scale up of HIV testing in sub-Saharan Africa, according to a study by Pearl Anne Ante-Testard published in the June issue of the Lancet Global Health. People living in the richest households were around three times as likely as those in the poorest households to have tested for HIV in the previous year.

    June 12, 2020
    General
    aidsmap

  • How Close Are We to a Cure for HIV?

    Worldwide, approximately 37.7 million individuals live with HIV, with approximately 1.1 million such individuals in the United States alone. Despite the widespread implementation of highly effective antiretroviral therapy (ART) and subsequent validation of the “undetectable equals untransmittable,” or U=U, concept, 1.7 million new cases occur annually alongside nearly 770,000 AIDS-related deaths. Although the cure for HIV has been a priority since the virus’ discovery, it remains elusive.

    June 11, 2020
    Cure
    Contagion Live

  • HIV Can Travel From the Brain, Animal Study Suggests

    This new work from Rush University Medical Center in Chicago found that certain types of brain cells can harbor HIV, which can then spread to immune cells that carry it elsewhere in the body -- even if HIV has been suppressed by antiretroviral therapy.

    June 11, 2020
    General
    US News & World Report

  • The Dangers of Excluding Women From HIV Prevention Drug Tests

    When Dázon Dixon Diallo began working to prevent the spread of HIV among women in 1985, she first had to convince them that they could get the infection. Even some HIV activists didn’t fully appreciate that women needed to be included in prevention efforts. Diallo founded an Atlanta-based organization called SisterLove to promote reproductive justice and to support women with or at risk of getting HIV/AIDS, expanding it to a program in South Africa, where today two-thirds of the people living with HIV are women. In the US, almost one in five new HIV diagnoses are among women.

    June 10, 2020
    PrEP
    Wired

  • ‘Flying Blind’: Doctors Race to Understand What COVID-19 Means for People With HIV

    Larry Pike has already survived one pandemic. The 76-year-old Seattle retiree has been living with HIV for 22 years. When COVID-19 hit Seattle, he grew worried. “Just like HIV,” he said, “there’s that ‘Who’s next?’ sort of thing.”

    June 10, 2020
    General
    STAT

  • As Uganda Takes Control of the HIV Epidemic, US Shifts Funding

    On July 11, 2003, then-US President George W. Bush and First Lady Laura Bush visited a clinic of The AIDS Support Organization (TASO) in Entebbe, Uganda, about 25 miles southwest of the capital Kampala. Six weeks earlier, the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) had been signed into law. Congress committed $15 billion to support HIV/AIDS prevention, care, and treatment over the next five years to combat the disease in the 15 most afflicted countries, including 12 in Africa, with Uganda foremost among them.

    June 10, 2020
    General
    Undark

  • South Africa Data Shows Higher COVID-19 Death Rates for People With HIV, TB

    Researchers have asked whether people living with HIV or tuberculosis might have a higher death rate from COVID-19 — given the impact these diseases have both on the immune system and the respiratory health of those infected.

    June 10, 2020
    General
    Devex

  • Few COVID-19 Studies Include Pregnant Women, Prompting Outcry

    When a pregnant woman walked into his office with COVID-19 symptoms, Jim Thornton, MD, knew he wanted to enroll her in a clinical trial to see what medication could help her.

    June 10, 2020
    General
    Medscape

  • Can a Vaccine for COVID-19 Be Developed in Record Time?

    In the history of medicine, rarely has a vaccine been developed in less than five years. Among the fastest to be developed was the current mumps vaccine, which was isolated from the throat washings of a child named Jeryl Lynn in 1963. Over the next months, the virus was systematically “weakened” in the lab by her father, a biomedical scientist named Maurice Hilleman. Such a weakened or attenuated virus stimulates an immune response but does not cause the disease; the immune response protects against future infections with the actual virus.

    June 9, 2020
    General
    New York Times Magazine

  • Females Are Still Routinely Left Out of Biomedical Research — And Ignored in Analyses of Data

    If you think biomedical scientists are doing a better job studying both biological sexes in their experiments than they used to, you’d be half right, a new study says.

    June 9, 2020
    General
    STAT

  • When People Stop Newer HIV Meds, Time to Viral Rebound Not Better Than With Older Antiretroviral Therapy, NIH Study Finds

    In order to measure the success of a cure for HIV or a non-antiretroviral therapy (any of the antibody studies that are underway, for instance), researchers must first take research study participants off of their antiretroviral regimen to test whether the experimental treatment is working. But most of what we know about viral load rebound and CD4 drops when people stop taking medications was learned with much older regimens. Do newer, better-tolerated medications also keep viral load low and CD4 counts higher, for longer periods than older regimens?

    June 9, 2020
    Treatment
    The BodyPro

  • How Grindr Is Helping Tackle Ghana’s Hidden HIV Epidemic

    On a humid, cloudy day last May, on the leafy outskirts of Ghana's capital city, Accra, Roland Obeng opened one of his two Grindr accounts. Surrounded by wood-carved penises in his otherwise ordinary office, the healthcare manager set to work replying to messages in the LGBTQ+ dating app. Obeng – who identifies as gay and requested I change his name for safety reasons – works at the West Africa AIDS Foundation-International Health Care Center (WAAF-IHCC). “I have two profiles,” he explained.

    June 9, 2020
    General
    Esquire

  • The Sexual-Health Supply Chain Is Broken

    It took Dimos Sakellaridis about six years to build Kiss condoms into one of Nigeria’s top brands, with approximately 91 million sold in 2019. The prophylactics are available in shops, markets, and kiosks across the country, and a combination of irreverent advertising, a growing population of young people, and a greater understanding of reproductive health within Nigeria has meant his sales have steadily risen.

    June 8, 2020
    Male and Female Condoms
    The Atlantic

  • Why We’re Still Waiting on a Vaccine for HIV and Other Deadly Viruses

    If scientists develop a SARS-CoV-2 vaccine within a year and a half, it would be a world record. The title is currently held by Maurice Hilleman, who turned his daughter’s throat swab into a licensed mumps prophylaxis within four years. Otherwise, preventive measures typically take a long time to develop: Measles, for example, was a nationally recognized disease in the U.S. for over 50 years before a vaccine was ready. In 1984, officials declared that an HIV vaccine would be ready for testing in two years. More than 35 years later, however, there is no HIV vaccine.

    June 8, 2020
    General
    Discover

  • Coronavirus Disrupts HIV Prevention Efforts in Africa

    In the days before the COVID-19 crisis, Ugandan sex worker Lillian Namiiro worked on the Tanzanian border, educating fellow sex workers and connecting her community to the national HIV response.

    June 7, 2020
    General
    East African

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