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13 October 2017 VOLUME 18 ISSUE 41

Media Coverage

  • A condom-maker's discovery: Size matters

    Condoms get a bad rap for being a bad wrap. Men often complain of discomfort, diminished sensation and poor fit. A recent federal study found only a third of American men use them. Now, changes by the Food and Drug Administration and industry-standards groups have opened the door to the condom equivalent of bespoke suits. A Boston-based company has begun selling custom-fit condoms in 60 sizes, in combinations of 10 lengths and nine circumferences.

    October 12, 2017
    Male and Female Condoms
    New York Times

  • People are living longer in places you wouldn't expect

    A recent data-crunch turned up a few surprises about how long people can expect to live in certain places....The...long-term Global Burden of Disease study didn't address the reasons for each story of success or struggle. But Christopher Murray,...lead author of the new study, has some theories:... several African countries, including Botswana, Rwanda and Zimbabwe, have scaled up treatment programs for HIV/AIDS.

    October 11, 2017
    General
    NPR Goats and Soda

  • End to pandemic requires holy grail of HIV/AIDS: an effective vaccine

    Research carried out at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases suggests that an end to the HIV/AIDS pandemic will only be possible with the development of an effective HIV vaccine. NIAID director Anthony Fauci writes that, while existing treatments are effective at suppressing HIV and preventing viral transmission, substantial gaps in implementation remain, and are likely to be difficult to eliminate.

    October 11, 2017
    HIV Vaccine
    Pharmaletter

  • International Day of the Girl Child: Helping girls pursue their dreams

    Empowering, supporting, and protecting girls is critical to controlling and ultimately ending the HIV/AIDS pandemic....This means understanding the unique challenges faced by girls and developing creative solutions to address them....PEPFAR has taken these challenges head-on.... Driven by data, we have rolled out an unprecedented and comprehensive package of interventions in the highest-burden areas of 10 African countries.

    October 11, 2017
    General
    Huffington Post

  • Financial Times features series of articles on investing in girls, gender equality

    Investing in girls and narrowing the gender gap brings a 'triple benefit' to society," the series summary says.

    October 11, 2017
    General
    Financial Times

  • Knowingly exposing others to HIV is no longer a felony in California

    California lawmakers have passed legislation to reduce the penalty for those who knowingly or intentionally expose others to HIV without their knowledge, rolling back a law that mostly affected sex workers. The bill...will lower charges for these acts from a felony to a misdemeanor when the law goes into effect in 2018....Knowingly donating HIV-infected blood, also a felony now, will be decriminalized.

    October 10, 2017
    General
    Washington Post

  • Trial reveals value of tuberculosis chemoprophylaxis in HIV-infected people

    Long-term follow-up in the ANRS TEMPRANO trial confirms that tuberculosis chemoprophylaxis in HIV-infected people is more than ever relevant in resource-limited countries....This long-term follow-up shows that tuberculosis chemoprophylaxis reduces not only severe morbidity, but also mortality, and that this benefit, which is independent of and complementary to that of antiretroviral treatment, lasts at least 6 years after administration.

    October 10, 2017
    General
    News-Medical

  • Merck's Gardasil 9 offers at least 6 years of cancer protection, data show

    Merck’s Gardasil 9 has come to dominate the HPV vaccine market, and a new, large-scale study that shows its protection against certain cancers lasts six years will only strengthen its case. The study enrolled 14,215 girls and women 16 to 26 years of age. At six years after the first dose, Gardasil 9's efficacy against cervical, vulvar and vaginal cancers related to...five additional HPV types above the four covered in the original Gardasil vaccine ranged from 90% to 98%.

    October 10, 2017
    General
    FiercePharma

  • IDWeek presenter highlights global implications of HIV treatment resistance in Philippines

    Dr. Edsel Salvaña has two posters in the exhibit hall here, each carrying terrible news from the Philippines that...has frightening implications well beyond his country. In fact, with findings showing an explosion of drug-resistant HIV in the Philippines following spread of a new subtype of the virus there, the trend his posters are showing in the Philippines has worldwide ramifications,...all the more daunting because the transmitted strain is resistant to tenofovir.

    October 10, 2017
    PrEP, Treatment
    Science Speaks

  • Many gay/bisexual men currently taking PrEP would switch to injectable forms of the therapy should it become available

    Approximately a third of gay and bisexual men who are currently taking oral (tenofovir/emtricitabine) pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) would prefer long-acting injectable PrEP should it become available, investigators report in AIDS and Behavior. Individuals were less likely to prefer injectable PrEP if they had concerns about the level of protection it provided against HIV and/or about its durability.

    October 9, 2017
    PrEP
    aidsmap

  • Moscow Buyers Club: Russia's AIDS patients work together to overcome medication shortages

    Russia in 2017 has come to resemble the plot of the Hollywood movie Dallas Buyers Club, set in the United States in the 1980s. "When I was diagnosed with HIV in the early 2000s, there was no treatment at all," says Aleksei Yaskovich,...who created the Aptechka network for redistributing HIV/AIDS medications in 2010....Aptechka also helps patients simply too tired or too ill to make it to their clinic to get their medications.

    October 8, 2017
    Treatment
    RadioFreeEurope/RadioLiberty

  • As cancer tears through Africa, drug makers draw up a battle plan

    In a deal similar to the one that turned the tide against AIDS, manufacturers and charities will make chemotherapy drugs available in 6 poor countries at steep discounts....Pfizer, based in New York, and Cipla, based in Mumbai, have promised to charge rock-bottom prices for 16 common chemotherapy drugs. The deal, initially offered to a half-dozen countries, is expected to bring lifesaving treatment to tens of thousands who would otherwise die.

    October 7, 2017
    General
    New York Times

  • Duterte’s ‘drug war’ is fueling the spread of disease

    President Rodrigo Duterte’s “drug war” has left thousands dead at the hands of police, but is also threatening lives in a different way....“Evidence from around the world shows that this kind of policy has a very negative impact on the rate of infection for various diseases, from tuberculosis to hepatitis and HIV,” said Agnes Callamard, human rights expert at Columbia University. “There will be secondary deaths that will be very difficult to monitor and quantify.”

    October 6, 2017
    General
    Washington Post

  • Secretary Tillerson lauds global health security agenda

    In a keynote speech in Washington, D.C., yesterday at the Grand Challenges network annual meeting, US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson voiced support for US collaboration on global infectious disease issues, including ongoing efforts to battle threats such as HIV and malaria.

    October 5, 2017
    General
    CIDRAP News

  • GW researcher awarded NIH grant to study how cocaine use affects HIV infection

    Following studies showing that cocaine influences the replication and transcription of HIV, a researcher at the George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences (SMHS) was awarded more than $2.3 million from the NIH to look deeper into the involved molecular mechanisms that allow this effect to happen. Mudit Tyagi, assistant professor of medicine and of microbiology, immunology, and tropical medicine at SMHS, will lead the study.

    October 5, 2017
    General
    News-Medical

  • Profile: Fogarty Fellow Dr Dorothy Dow studies suicide prevention in teens with HIV in Tanzania

    Dr. Dorothy Dow had been working since 2011 in a clinic in Tanzania on pediatric infectious diseases and prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV, when she observed something troubling: HIV mortality rates increasing among teens even as they declined in most other age groups....She shifted focus...and harnessed the Fogarty Global Health Fellowship in 2014 to begin research to better understand the psychological difficulties experienced by youth living with HIV in Tanzania.

    September 1, 2017
    General
    Global Health Matters

Published Research

  • Developing nations need more than just money

    Many scientists return home after studying in the United States or Europe and successfully apply for grants, often from international philanthropies or funders. The real problem is using the money. There is a disconnect between the funding systems that we can tap into and the institutions where we work....Current practices by both funders and universities practically guarantee that our funds — already limited — are spent inefficiently. We need more investment in administrative systems and more flexibility.

    October 10, 2017
    General
    Nature

  • A randomized crossover study evaluating the use and acceptability of the SILCS diaphragm compared to vaginal applicators for vaginal gel delivery

    We found no significant differences in acceptability between the two products. Experience of gel leakage after sex was greater when inserted via applicator. More women were interested in SILCS/gel for multipurpose protection (68%) than in either SILCS alone (17%) or microbicide gel alone (14%). Conclusion: A SILCS gel delivery system for multipurpose prevention seems feasible and acceptable.

    October 9, 2017
    Microbicides
    AIDS and Behavior

  • Getting serious about financing the end of epidemics

    The US Congress appears poised to reject major cuts to global health programmes, but a more fundamental problem remains. The international efforts to end the epidemics of AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria are underfinanced....Policymakers and global health advocates should take this up with urgency and be willing to get out of their comfort zones. The funding gap is completely avoidable, but addressing it will require understanding the potential and limitations of each financing approach.

    October 6, 2017
    General
    Lancet Global Health

  • Africa: Women's invisible power

    Women hold the key to improving people's health in sub-Saharan Africa. They bear the brunt of such scourges as HIV and diabetes. And they are the primary care-givers....But tailoring health solutions to African women is not easy, partly because their access to care is often compromised by patriarchal family structures and norms, particularly in the poorest communities, which hold tightest to traditional gender roles.

    October 4, 2017
    General
    Nature Outlook

  • The critical role of biomedical research in pandemic preparedness

    Unusual reports of Kaposi sarcoma and...pneumonia in previously healthy gay men in 1981 alerted the world to a new infectious disease threat, heralding the HIV/AIDS pandemic. The medical and public health communities faced a steep learning curve in coordinating public health and biomedical research efforts as the pandemic evolved. Since then, international partners in academia, government, and industry have devoted substantial efforts to pandemic preparedness, building on lessons learned from HIV and other outbreaks.

    October 4, 2017
    General
    JAMA

  • Understanding the correlates of attrition associated with antiretroviral use and viral suppression among women living with HIV in Canada

    Among the 1425 WLWH enrolled in the Canadian HIV Women's Sexual and Reproductive Health Cohort Study,...age between 26 and 34, unstable housing, food insecurity, current injection drug use, higher HIV-related stigma, and racial discrimination were associated with increased odds of not being on cART. Factors associated with increased odds of reporting a detectable viral load among women on cART included age ≤34 years, less than a secondary education, unstable housing, and incarceration in the previous year.

    October 1, 2017
    Treatment
    AIDS Patient Care and STDs

  • Trends in sexual behavior among men who have sex with men (MSM) in high-income countries, 1999-2013: a systematic review

    HIV diagnoses among men who have sex with men (MSM) have been increasing in several high-income countries.... Studies included come from the United States, Europe, and Australia. We found increasing trends in condomless anal sex and condomless anal sex with an HIV-discordant partner, and a decreasing trend in number of partners. The increase in condomless anal sex may help to explain the increase in HIV infections.

    October 1, 2017
    General
    AIDS and Behavior

  • When science and values collide: recalling the lessons of evidence-based HIV prevention

    At this time, when so much of our public discourse is dominated by what is truth and what is not, it is useful to remember the hard-won lessons from our decades of experience with HIV....[S]ocial problems must be informed by the best available information. When information is lacking, it is incumbent that we take steps to gather the needed data, resisting the urge to base our actions on subjective beliefs, individual opinions and time-worn responses.

    October 1, 2017
    Combination Prevention, PrEP
    AIDS and Behavior

  • Australasian Society for HIV, Viral Hepatitis and Sexual Health Medicine HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis: clinical guidelines

    These 2017 Australasian Society for HIV, Viral Hepatitis and Sexual Health Medicine‘s (ASHM) PrEP Guidelines are an updated adaptation of the 2014 US Centers for Disease Control‘s PrEP guidelines....Daily PrEP with co-formulated tenofovir and emtricitabine, used continuously or for shorter periods of time, is recommended as a key HIV-prevention option for men who have sex with men, transgender men and women, heterosexual men and women, and people who inject drugs at substantial risk of HIV acquisition.

    July 1, 2017
    PrEP
    J Virus Eradication

  • Towards an ideal antiretroviral regimen for the global HIV epidemic

    Here, we highlight five aspects to be considered when thinking of an ideal global ART regimen: (1) the co-administration with other medications especially tuberculosis treatment; (2) treatment for specific populations such as women, children, adolescents, older people and acutely infected individuals; (3) efficacy; (4) safety, tolerability and convenience; and (5) affordability and global access for all PLWH.

    July 1, 2017
    Treatment
    J Virus Eradication

  • Awareness of pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) among women who inject drugs in NYC: the importance of networks and syringe exchange programs for HIV prevention

    The analysis consisted of 118 WWID. Awareness of PrEP was relatively low (31%), risk factors high. In the last 12 months, almost two thirds reported condomless sex, approximately one third reported transactional sex, and one third reported sharing injection equipment....Increased PrEP awareness was associated with reported transactional sex and conversation about HIV prevention at a syringe exchange program. We did not find race, education, household income, age, binge drinking, or sexual identity to be significantly associated with PrEP awareness.

    June 29, 2017
    PrEP
    Harm Reduction Journal

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