Email Updates

You are here

Home

12 MAY 2023 VOLUME 25 ISSUE 19

Media Coverage

  • Dapivirine Vaginal Ring Shows Comparable HIV Risk Rate With Oral PrEP

    Early real-world data from Zimbabwe on the dapivirine vaginal ring shows a similar rate of new HIV acquisitions between women using the ring and oral PrEP, Jabulani Mavudze of Population Solutions For Health in Harare told the INTEREST 2023 conference in Maputo, Mozambique this week. The study also found that more rural than urban women preferred the ring, and that more women continued to use the ring for several months.

    May 12, 2023
    PrEP
    aidsmap

  • Numbers of Young People Contracting HIV Keeps on Increasing, Says Health Minister

    he number of young people infected with HIV and STI keeps on increasing. This is according to the Department of Health Minister Dr Joe Phaahla. He said the people affected the most were adolescent girls and young women. Phaahla said this was a major challenge for South Africa. “Through our Youth Prevention strategy called Zikhala Kanjani we hope to reduce HIV and STIs for the 15-24 years age by 40 percent by 2025.

    May 11, 2023
    General
    IOL News

  • Does HIV Need a Rebrand?

    Thandolwethu Cindi, a South African TikTok influencer, had the biggest shock of her life during her senior year in high school. She’s been going to the doctor twice a year since she was a kid. But all along, she thought it was for kidney stones, which was what her parents told her. But things started not to add up. Her symptoms didn’t match that of someone with kidney stones, and her family asked her not to disclose her medications in school. During a biology class, she found out she could even have kidney stones surgically removed, but no one had offered her that option.

    May 11, 2023
    General
    Devex

  • Training Researchers to Combat HIV Inequities in Minority Communities

    A new training program at the University of Miami (UM) provides young researchers with opportunities to work with some of the communities most affected by HIV health inequities. The Culturally focused HIV Advancements through the Next Generation for Equity (CHANGE) Training Program aims to equip the next generation of HIV behavioral scientists with the skills required to address and eliminate health disparities in HIV treatment and prevention in South Florida’s Black, Latino and LGBTQ communities, according to a UM news release.

    May 11, 2023
    General
    POZ Magazine

  • FDA Eases Restrictions on Blood Donation for Men Who Have Sex With Men

    The FDA on Thursday finalized a long-awaited plan to loosen restrictions on blood donation by men who have sex with men. It will update risk-based individual questionnaires to help reduce the risk of transfusion-transmitted HIV. Screening questions asked of prospective blood donors will still recommend the deferral of individuals who report having a new sexual partner and have engaged in anal sex in the past three months, as well as of individuals who report having more than one sexual partner in the last three months and have also had anal sex.

    May 11, 2023
    General
    Politico

  • HIV Activists Urge US Govt to Appeal Gilead Court Ruling

    HIV activists want the US government to appeal Tuesday’s court ruling that pharmaceutical company Gilead did not infringe on patents held by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) related to two anti-retroviral (ARV) drugs. The US government had claimed $1 billion in patent violations in relation to the use of Gilead’s Truvada and Descovy for HIV prevention – called pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP).

    May 10, 2023
    General
    Health Policy Watch

  • Is Mpox Making a Comeback?

    Health officials in Chicago have reported a new cluster of 13 mpox (formerly monkeypox) cases, following a small outbreak in France in March. Although the number of cases remains low, the new clusters raise concern about the possibility of a resurgence this summer. Experts are urging people at risk—primarily sexually active gay men—to get both doses of the Jynneos mpox vaccine. Vaccination is especially important for people with advanced HIV, who are most likely to develop severe mpox illness.

    May 10, 2023
    General
    POZ Magazine

  • HIV Controllers May Be More Susceptible to Non-AIDS Illnesses Compared to People on HIV Treatment

    A new study finds that HIV controllers – people who don’t need HIV treatment to maintain viral loads below 400 copies – are twice as likely to experience certain non-AIDS-related health conditions, particularly infections such as bronchitis. The results raise the questions of whether antiretroviral therapy (ART) might benefit some controllers and under what conditions.

    May 9, 2023
    Treatment
    aidsmap

  • Court To Decide Whether Pharmacists Can Start HIV Medicines Without a Doctor’s Script

    In August 2021, the South African Pharmacy Council (SAPC) published legislation in the Government Gazette to enable pharmacists to prescribe and dispense antiretroviral medicines (ART) for the treatment and prevention of HIV. The initiative, known as Pharmacist-Initiated Management of ART, or PIMART, aims to address the low rates of uptake of ART prophylactic treatment in South Africa and close the gap between the numbers of people diagnosed with HIV and those initiated onto treatment. (At the time Spotlight reported on PIMART here.)

    May 9, 2023
    Treatment
    Daily Maverick

  • New CDC-Funded Project Aims to Get HIV Self-Testing Kits Into 1 Million Homes

    According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), about 13 percent of the roughly 1.2 million folks living with HIV in the US don’t know their serostatus—a stat that obviously underscores the need to make HIV testing as near-universal, common, easy, and free as possible. HIV testing took a hit during the COVID-19 pandemic shutdown, when fewer people were showing up to testing sites. That interruption in testing has highlighted the possibility of expanding testing through at-home rapid HIV self-testing kits.

    May 9, 2023
    General
    TheBody

  • Review Finds Continuation is Key Issue in PrEP Programming for Adolescent Girls, Young Women

    A recent literature review found that continuation is still an ongoing challenge in providing pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) for adolescent girls and young women (AGYW), necessitating more investment in less adherence-dependent formulations. The World Health Organization has recommended tenofovir-based oral PrEP as an additional HIV prevention option for individuals at substantial HIV risk and as part of a comprehensive prevention package.

    May 9, 2023
    PrEP
    Pharmacy Times

  • Natural HIV Controllers May Still Be at Risk for Health Problems

    People with HIV who naturally control the virus without antiretroviral therapy were twice as likely to develop non-AIDS-defining health problems, especially infections, compared with HIV-negative people, according to study results published in Open Forum Infectious Diseases. This raises questions about whether such individuals should receive treatment.

    May 9, 2023
    Treatment
    POZ Magazine

  • The Anti-HIV Injection Will Be Made in SA: Here Are 4 Benefits of the Deal That Made It Happen

    Although a start date hasn’t been announced, the South African arm of the Indian drug company Cipla has confirmed that a generic version of the two-monthly HIV prevention injection, CAB-LA (short for long-acting cabotegravir), will be made at its plants in Benoni or Durban. Cabotegravir is an antiretroviral drug that blocks HIV from entering someone’s cells.

    May 9, 2023
    PrEP
    Bhekisisa

  • Challenges Faced by Mothers Living With HIV in Indonesia

    Living with HIV is certainly a very big deal. It has detrimental mental health impacts on people. Such impacts are even worse for mothers living with HIV whose children are also living with HIV. Informed by the findings of a PhD project of Dr Nelsensius Fauk, supervised by Professor Paul Ward and Associate Professor Lillian Mwanri, exploring risk factors and impacts of HIV on women living with HIV, the researchers conducted further interviews with 23 mothers living with HIV who also have a child living with HIV in Yogyakarta, Indonesia.

    May 8, 2023
    General
    Mirage News

  • Breastfeeding? People With HIV Should Have a Say

    New guidelines for feeding infants born to people with HIV do not outright ban breastfeeding, as they have in the past. Instead, the new US perinatal HIV clinical guidelines suggest that parents make this decision after weighing the pros and cons with their physicians. “These changes could be described as historic or even seismic, given decades of prohibition against breastfeeding among mothers living with HIV in the US,” said Elaine Abrams, MD, a professor of epidemiology and pediatrics at Columbia University, in New York City.

    May 8, 2023
    General
    Infectious Disease Special Edition

  • ‘Inform and Empower’ Patients on PrEP to Start HPV Vaccine Series

    “HPV vaccination is the best tool we have to prevent anal cancer, which disproportionally impacts gay/bisexual men and transgender women,” Christopher Wheldon, PhD, MSPH, MEd, explains. “The odds of a gay man developing anal cancer are about 20 to 80 times higher than a heterosexual man. In my early research, I found that young gay/bisexual men were willing to get vaccinated against HPV; they just didn’t routinely go to a primary care physician. But they were engaging in HIV prevention, including PrEP.”

    May 5, 2023
    HPV Vaccines
    Physician's Weekly

Published Research

Announcements