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14 APRIL 2023 VOLUME 25 ISSUE 15

Media Coverage

  • The Emergence of Mpox as an HIV-Related Opportunistic Infection

    During the multinational mpox (formerly known as monkeypox) clade IIb outbreak in 2022, the emergence of severe mpox among people with HIV bore a striking resemblance to the emergence of opportunistic infections early in the HIV epidemic of the 1980s. Similar to HIV-associated opportunistic infections, mpox produces substantially greater morbidity and prolonged disease in people with advanced (ie, CD4 <350 cells per mm3) or untreated HIV infection.

    April 14, 2023
    General
    The Lancet

  • PEPFAR Is A True Bipartisan Success With An Uncertain Future

    The words “gridlock in Congress” are used so often that it’s hard to believe there are still issues that are truly bipartisan. However, after many decades, there is one issue that continues to receive support from both sides of the aisle. The effort to end HIV and AIDS has been not only a uniting cause in Congress, but it has also, through the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), resulted in one of the best examples of US global health leadership in history.

    April 14, 2023
    General
    Health Affairs

  • Fully Funding HIV Response Key to Saving Lives

    Fully financing the HIV response in Africa to end AIDS as a public health threat by 2030 will save millions of lives and improve economic outcomes. But governments must act immediately. That’s the message from new research and analysis conducted by Economist Impact in 13 African countries, including South Africa. The report titled A triple dividend: The health, social, and economic gains from financing the HIV response in Africa, compiled by UNAIDS reveals that fully financing the HIV response will not only save lives but also produce substantial health, social, and economic gains.

    April 13, 2023
    General
    Health-E News

  • PEPFAR Reauthorization on the Horizon

    This year, the US government’s signature global health effort in the fight against HIV is up for congressional reauthorization. The President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR, is broadly regarded as one of the most successful efforts in global health history, reporting that it has saved an estimated twenty-five million lives since the Bush administration created it in 2003. Our research shows that PEPFAR has also generated many positive spillover effects, such as large reductions in maternal and child mortality and significant increases in childhood immunization rates.

    April 13, 2023
    General
    Think Global Health

  • “Words Matter HIV Toolkit” Aims to Destigmatize the Topic Among Black Youth

    In honor of National Youth HIV & AIDS Awareness Day (NYHAAD) April 10, the National Black Justice Coalition (NBJC) released a new Words Matter HIV Toolkit with resources to support Black youth, who are disproportionately impacted by HIV. The Words Matter HIV Toolkit aims to educate and encourage people to have stigma-free conversations surrounding the virus. It also urges individuals who are living with HIV to take antiretrovirals and try to maintain an undetectable level.

    April 13, 2023
    General
    POZ Magazine

  • A Teen Chronicles His HIV Journey on TikTok, From Fear to Acceptance

    In the first video, Zachary Willmore is sitting in his childhood bedroom wearing a pink sweatshirt, his blond hair swooshed to the side, and begins applying makeup. “Yesterday I found out that I got diagnosed with HIV,” Willmore says in the 48-second TikTok video. “I’m not posting this until I feel completely ready because honestly I’m worried about people looking at me as untouchable. But people keep giving me hugs.”

    April 12, 2023
    General
    Washington Post

  • New STI Prevention Findings Are Out – We Unpack What They Mean for South Africa

    In 2022, Spotlight reported that taking a widely available antibiotic after condomless sex can reduce the risk of contracting three different sexually transmitted infections (STIs). The antibiotic, doxycycline, was found to significantly reduce the risk of men who have sex with men (MSM) and transgender women developing chlamydia, gonorrhoea, and syphilis in a study conducted in San Francisco and Seattle in the US. (Spotlight previously reported on the state of gonorrhoea and syphilis in South Africa.)

    April 12, 2023
    General
    Daily Maverick

  • STDs Are on the Rise. This Morning-After-Style Pill May Help

    US health officials released data Tuesday showing how chlamydia, gonorrhea and syphilis cases have been accelerating, but doctors are hoping an old drug will help fight the sexually transmitted infections. Experts believe STDs have been rising because of declining condom use, inadequate sex education and reduced testing during the COVID-19 pandemic. Millions of Americans are infected each year. Rates are highest in men who have sex with men, and among Black and Hispanic Americans and Native Americans.

    April 11, 2023
    General
    Washington Post

  • Syphilis Cases at Highest Levels in 70 Years in Alarming Trend

    The number of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) in the United States shows "no signs of slowing," new federal data shows. A total of 2.53 million cases of chlamydia, gonorrhea and syphilis were recorded in 2021, according to a new report published Tuesday from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That's a 5.8 percent increase from the 2.39 million cases reported in 2020 and a 7 percent increase from five years ago when 2.37 million STIs were recorded in 2017.

    April 11, 2023
    General
    ABC News

  • Proliferation, Not Replication: HIV Is Lifelong Because Infected Cells Divide, Not Only Because They Infect Others

    A poster and a talk both presented at the recent Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI 2023) dampened down expectations that a cure for HIV may soon be possible using less risky and expensive methods than the stem-cell transplants that have so far cured five people (see this report for the latest).

    April 11, 2023
    General
    aidsmap

  • Don't Fear HIV-Positive Blood, Use It

    HIV infection rates within the Asian-American population increased by 36 percent between 2010 and 2014, with similar findings in 2020, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “I think that’s really a symptom of that invisibility that occurs for [Asian-American/Pacific Islander] communities,” Melanie Dulfo, Community Director at APICHA Community Health Center in New York City, told Gay City News.

    April 11, 2023
    General
    Plus Magazine

  • HIV Diagnoses Increases More Than Three-Fold After Implementing Targeted Testing in EDs

    Targeted testing for HIV in emergency departments has great potential for increasing diagnoses, this year's European Congress of Clinical Microbiology & Infectious Diseases (ECCMID) in Copenhagen, Denmark, (15-18 April), will hear. In analysis of data from 34 emergency departments (ED) in Spain found that the number of HIV diagnoses more than trebled after targeted testing was implemented.

    April 10, 2023
    General
    News Medical

  • Stigma Keeps US Youth at High Risk for HIV/AIDS

    If I asked you to tell me which age group has one of the highest incidences of HIV, I’m willing to wager that you wouldn’t say 13- to 24-year-olds. And, yet, these young people represent 20 percent of new HIV diagnoses, the second-highest rate of new cases, behind only 25- to 34-year-olds. We must keep this in mind as we observe National Youth HIV and AIDS Awareness Day on April 10 — in the wake of two devastating court decisions that perpetuate stigmatization and harm to people living with HIV, making the situation even direr for young people.

    April 10, 2023
    General
    The Hill

  • Why 9 Is Not Too Young for the HPV Vaccine

    For Sonja O'Leary, MD, higher rates of vaccination against human papillomavirus came with the flip of a switch. O'Leary, the interim director of service for outpatient pediatric services at Denver Health and Hospital Authority (DHHA), and her colleagues saw rates of HPV and other childhood immunizations drop during the COVID-19 pandemic and decided to act. Their health system, which includes 28 federally qualified health centers, offers vaccines at any inpatient or outpatient visit based on alerts from their electronic health record.

    April 10, 2023
    STI Vaccines
    Medscape

  • Male Circumcision May Protect Against HPV Infection in Males and Females

    Human papillomavirus (HPV) is the most common sexually transmitted infection globally. While low-risk HPV types are associated with genital warts, high-risk HPV types are considered major causative factors for cervical cancer. Male circumcision is known to have protective effects against many sexually transmitted infections and sexual activity-related conditions. Many studies have found a link between male circumcision and reduced risk of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection, herpes simplex virus type 2 infection, syphilis, genital ulcer, chancroid, and candidiasis.

    April 10, 2023
    Voluntary Medical Male Circumcision
    News Medical

  • Nairobians Diagnosed With STIs Have Sharply Increased, Doctors Reveal

    Reproductive health doctors in Nairobi, Kenya say they have noticed an increase in the number of patients diagnosed with sexually transmitted infections (STIs). This comes after a recent KEMRI study indicated that patients in Western Kenya had increasingly been diagnosed with gonorrhea and chlamydia.

    April 8, 2023
    General
    Standard Media

  • Antibiotic Taken Within 72 Hours of Sexual Exposure Reduces STIs by Two-Thirds

    A new study demonstrated that the antibiotic, doxycycline, significantly prevented sexually transmitted infections (STIs) in men who have sex with men (MSM) and transgender women who took the medication within 72 hours of having condomless sex. Specifically, the post-exposure approach, termed doxy-PEP, resulted in a two-thirds reduction in the incidence of syphilis, gonorrhea, and chlamydia among the study participants, all of whom reported having an STI within the previous year.

    April 7, 2023
    General
    Contagion Live

  • Despite Uganda’s Colonial Anti-LGBTQ Law, We Must Not Forget the Progress Africa Has Made Against HIV/AIDS

    In a recent interview with TheBody about the effect of biomedical interventions on queer promiscuity, Andrew Spieldenner―the executive director of the global gay men’s health group MPact―commented, “In so many countries, they’re not criminalizing love—they’re criminalizing sex.” Though Spieldenner likely wasn’t thinking of Uganda when he said those words, he might as well have been, because on March 21, one week after TheBody published that interview, the sub-Saharan country’s parliament passed a bill that will impose the death penalty for homosexuality if it is signed into law by Pr

    April 7, 2023
    General
    TheBody

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