19 NOVEMBER 2021 VOLUME 23 ISSUE 46

A “very important” part of Merck’s HIV strategy has come off the rails. Just months after talking up the importance of MK-8507, Merck has paused development of the asset in response to mid-phase data that also raised questions about the backbone of all the company’s planned HIV regimens.

Over the past 2 years, the COVID-19 pandemic has caused numerous disruptions in healthcare, including in global HIV/AIDS services. But new data presented at the Association of Nurses in AIDS Care (ANAC) 2021 Annual Meeting suggest that practitioners quickly adapted to challenges posed by the pandemic, and care and prevention services around the world have begun to return to prepandemic levels.

Charities have welcomed the approval of the treatment by the NHS drugs watchdog, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence. The therapy keeps the virus at bay, in a similar way to conventional antiretroviral drugs. An estimated 13,000 people in England could make the switch.

Dr. Hansel Tookes hops out of the back of a white medical van in his signature tailored scrubs with a stash of HIV antiretroviral meds tucked under his arm. A Black elderly woman waits by the doorway of her white and red bungalow. As Tookes approaches, a rooster and some chickens dart past him on the sidewalk. The woman offers a wide grin.

Dozens of types of human papillomavirus (HPV) can live in the human genital tract, and having one or more of them increased women’s risk of acquiring HIV by two and a half times, according to study findings published in the journal AIDS.

At the 2018 US Conference on AIDS (USCA), Charles Stephens and Mark S. King raised an important question when they presented a workshop titled, “Are We Shaming Those Who Are Detectable?” The workshop focused on how the undetectable equals untransmittable (U=U) message impacts community discussions around having a detectable HIV viral load. At the workshop, one attendee, Martin Walker, announced that he was detectable and later shared his story with TheBody.

Despite being at high risk for HIV infection, only 1-2 percent of people who inject drugs use preventative pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP). Suzan Walters, PhD, is a sociologist who takes special interest in health disparities among stigmatized populations, such as injection drug users. “We have wonderful biomedical interventions, tools to treat, tools to prevent, such as PrEP…What I’d like to bring to the table is thinking of social responses and collaboration to prevent HIV,” Walters said.

Insufficient HIV-related nursing education is a major barrier to implementing HIV screening efforts in emergency departments (EDs), according to a national survey of ED nurses. Nearly 43 percent of respondents said they had received "little" or "very little" HIV education as part of their professional development and practice.

Long-acting therapies headlined a year of continued drug development, both in the treatment and prevention of HIV. Meanwhile, CDC recommended a third dose of a COVID-19 mRNA vaccine for certain patients living with advanced or untreated HIV to boost their protection.

Researchers interviewed 50 adolescents and young people aged 18-24 who were involved in PrEP trials in two urban townships in Cape Town, South Africa. They did this to examine the ways in which families influence adolescents and young people to keep or to stop using PrEP.

People who inject drugs (PWID) have been a marginalized and a stigmatized population since the beginning of the AIDS epidemic and have not experienced the same life-changing benefits of antiretroviral therapy as others. Tele-Harm Reduction (THR) is a telehealth-enhanced, harm reduction intervention, delivered within a trusted SSP venue. It aims to facilitate initiation of care and achieve rapid HIV viral suppression among PWID living with HIV.

Knowledge with respect to adolescents’ intentions to engage in protective sexual behaviours is still deficient in numerous countries around the world, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) where HIV prevalence is the highest. Increasing cross-sectional research suggests that the theory of planned behaviour (TPB) is robust in predicting condom use intentions. This study used secondary, baseline data from a study involving 794 in-school adolescents. A structural equation model was applied to the data.

Advances in HIV prevention therapies have led to significant reductions in HIV transmission across the USA. However, these resources have not been equally utilized across all populations, with Black communities in the Southeastern USA experiencing among the greatest HIV disparities in the nation. Tailoring HIV programs to align with the cultural norms of minority communities is one approach that can increase uptake of HIV prevention services.

A sterilizing cure of HIV-1 infection has been reported in 2 persons living with HIV-1 who underwent allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantations from donors who were homozygous for the CCR5Δ32 gene polymorphism. However, this has been considered elusive during natural infection.

Curing HIV will require eliminating the reservoir of integrated, replication-competent proviruses that persist despite antiretroviral therapy (ART). Understanding the burden, genetic diversity, and longevity of persisting proviruses in diverse individuals with HIV is critical to this goal, but these characteristics remain understudied in some groups. Among them are viremic controllers—individuals who naturally suppress HIV to low levels but for whom therapy is nevertheless recommended.

Programmes that merge management of Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) and tuberculosis (TB) aim to improve HIV/TB co-infected patients’ access to comprehensive treatment. However, several reports from sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) indicate suboptimal uptake of antiretroviral therapy (ART) even after integration of HIV and TB treatment. This study assessed ART uptake, its barriers and enablers in programmes integrating TB and HIV treatment in SSA.

Over the past decade, biomedical HIV research has increasingly focused on developing and testing HIV cure strategies, which aim to eliminate latently infected cells from the body therefore achieving viral suppression without the use of ART. Youth and young adults living with HIV (YLWH) are the generational cohort that is most likely to benefit from future treatment advances. However, YLWH are underrepresented in HIV cure research and research exploring willingness, perceptions, barriers, and facilitators of HIV cure research participation.

In 2019, the World Health Organisation (WHO) recommended Dolutegravir (DTG) as the preferred first-line antiretroviral treatment (ART) for all persons with HIV. ART regimen switches may affect HIV treatment adherence. We sought to describe patient experiences switching from EFV to DTG-based ART in Kampala, Uganda.

Brief interventions have proven to be valuable instruments for the treatment and care of clients with diverse health needs, due to their potential to impact both the individual and the population. In this regard, the Brief Sexuality-Related Communication (BSC) is presented as a viable and effective alternative for addressing sexual and reproductive health problems, assessing risk behaviors and motivating clients to generate behavioral change.

Trans people are disproportionately impacted by HIV yet have not been adequately prioritized in national HIV responses or policy documents. This review aims to understand the extent of meaningful inclusion of trans people in national strategic plans (NSPs) for HIV/AIDS as an essential step in ensuring that HIV policy aligns with epidemiologic data, and trans-specific programming is funded, implemented and sustained.

A potential concern with the use of dapivirine (DPV) for HIV prevention is the selection of a drug-resistant virus that could spread and reduce the effectiveness of non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase (NNRTI)-based first-line antiretroviral therapy. We evaluated HIV-1 seroconversions in MTN-020/ASPIRE for selection of drug resistance and evaluated the genetic basis for observed reductions in susceptibility to DPV.

Because the public health response to the disproportionate HIV burden faced by Black sexual minority men (BSMMM) has focused on sexual risk reduction and disease prevention, other vital components of sexual health (e.g., intimacy, pleasure, benefits of sex) have been often overlooked. Sex-positive describes a more open, holistic approach toward sex and sexuality that prioritizes these other components, though such an approach is rarely applied to BSMM's sexual health.

Supporting the ability of women living with HIV (WLWH) to avoid unintended pregnancy during the postpartum period decreases the number of new pediatric HIV infections, reduces pregnancy-related morbidity and mortality, and is a cost-effective strategy for the elimination of mother-to-child transmission. However, little is currently known about the contraceptive intentions and experiences of reinitiating family planning use among mothers living with HIV as they transition from pregnancy into postpartum.