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21 October 2016 VOLUME 17 ISSUE 42

Media Coverage

  • Why hospital infections are a bigger threat than HIV, influenza and tuberculosis

    Six healthcare-associated infections are a bigger burden on hospitals than influenza, HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis together....The big six are pneumonia, urinary tract and surgical site infections, Clostridium difficile..., neonatal sepsis, and primary bloodstream infections. That's the conclusion of a study on Tuesday in PLOS Medicine.

    October 20, 2016
    Deutsche Welle

  • HIV: hepatitis coinfection may increase lymphoma risk

    Coinfection with chronic hepatitis B virus or hepatitis C virus is associated with a significantly increased risk for non-Hodgkin's lymphoma among patients with HIV who are receiving antiretroviral therapy, according to a study published online October 18 in the Annals of Internal Medicine.

    October 20, 2016
    Medscape

  • Vaginal and rectal bacteria may have a big influence on HIV transmission and microbicide efficacy

    A number of presentations at the 2016 HIV Research for Prevention Conference (HIVR4P) in Chicago looked at the influence of vaginal bacteria on HIV susceptibility....One presentation found that vaginal bacteria may have profound effects on levels of certain drugs used as microbicides, but not on others, [and] a poster found a correlation between condomless anal sex and changes in the predominant bacterial species that may similarly increase susceptibility to HIV infection.

    October 20, 2016
    aidsmap

  • PrEP attitudes 'paradoxical' among docs in training

    In a survey-based study, medical students were more likely to say they'd be willing to prescribe PrEP if a hypothetical patient was consistently using condoms and planned to continue, according to Susan Calabrese, Yale University School of Public Health. But that's "paradoxical," since patients who don't use condoms and don't plan to start, and those who currently use them and plan to stop, are precisely those at greatest need for PrEP.

    October 20, 2016
    MedPage Today

  • Pre-teens need only two HPV shots, not three, CDC recommends

    Two doses of a vaccine that protects against cervical and several other types of cancer are enough for 11-to 12-year-olds, rather than the previous three-shot regimen...."Safe, effective, and long-lasting protection against HPV cancers with two visits instead of three means more Americans will be protected from cancer, [and]...make it simpler for parents to get their children protected in time," CDC Director Tom Frieden said.

    October 19, 2016
    Reuters

  • Second case emerges of someone on daily prep getting HIV

    The results were presented by Cleveland Clinic HIV specialist Howard Grossman, who unveiled the finding at the 2016 HIV Research for Prevention conference in Chicago Tuesday....Grossman found that the patient’s strain of HIV was resistant to both of the drugs in Truvada, as well as all of the other drugs in its class.

    October 19, 2016
    BuzzFeed

  • Anal sex may transmit four in ten HIV infections in US women at high risk

    A study presented at the 2016 HIV Research for Prevention (HIVR4P) Conference suggests that, in women at high risk of HIV infection, 40% or more of the HIV infections in this group might be transmitted via anal intercourse....Nearly 10,000 ‘high risk’ HIV-negative, non-drug-injecting women aged 18-60 who had been in the 2010/2013 National HIV Behavioural Surveillance Survey were...surveyed.

    October 19, 2016
    aidsmap

  • Rare case shows PrEP not perfect

    Pre-exposure prophylaxis...is highly effective...but not perfect, as illustrated by a rare case of infection with a multidrug-resistant HIV strain, Howard Grossman of the Cleveland Clinic...told reporters at the HIV Research for Prevention conference....The case is the second reported this year of HIV infection despite adherence to daily PrEP, but Grossman said the reports have to be put in the context of more than 100,000 people in North America taking PrEP. "Those are pretty good odds," he told MedPage Today.

    October 19, 2016
    MedPage Today

  • HIV resistance rare with preventive ring

    Analysis of a major HIV prevention trial among women suggests that developing drug resistance while using a vaginal ring that delivers antiretroviral medication is not an issue. On the other hand, a less clinical factor -- domestic violence -- affects how women use the ring and therefore how well they are protected from HIV, researchers told reporters at the HIV Research for Prevention conference.

    October 19, 2016
    MedPage Today

  • Policy makers’ inaction is leading people to take PrEP ‘in the wild’

    An increasing number of gay men and others at risk of HIV are seeking to protect their health with PrEP, but the lack of PrEP provision and lack of regulatory approval in many countries is leading people to take PrEP without medical supervision and on an ad-hoc basis. This will undermine the safety and effectiveness of PrEP, Jerome Galea said as he presented results of the PrEP in the Wild survey to the HIVR4P 2016 conference.

    October 19, 2016
    aidsmap

  • PrEP success breeds complexity in HIV prevention trials

    HIV researchers and advocates have worked toward a gold-standard method of HIV prevention that is more effective than condoms, a robust HIV-prevention pipeline that features a variety of investigational medications and novel delivery methods, and advances no one could have predicted. "We worked for decades to get to this place," Jim Pickett, AIDS Foundation of Chicago, told Medscape....But "this place" is complicated...[and] means the design of next-generation HIV-prevention trials has to change.

    October 18, 2016
    Medscape

  • 2 people got HIV despite PrEP -- and millions get HIV without it

    This year, two cases have been reported of people getting HIV while adherent to PrEP. The most recent was revealed this week at the HIV Research for Prevention conference in Chicago. In this same year, about 50,000 people in the US (plus many, many more worldwide) will have acquired HIV while not taking PrEP. Why do we focus so much on these rare cases of transmission among people who are adherent to PrEP?

    October 18, 2016
    The Body

  • 7 insurers alleged to have discriminated against HIV patients

    The Affordable Care Act prohibits insurers from discriminating against people with serious illnesses, but some marketplace plans sidestep that taboo....Complaints filed with the Department of Health and Human Services' Office for Civil Rights by Harvard Law School's Center for Health Law and Policy Innovation charge that plans offered by seven insurers in eight states are discriminatory because they don't cover drugs essential to the treatment of HIV or require high out-of-pocket spending for covered drugs.

    October 18, 2016
    NPR

  • Antiretroviral clubs support patients with HIV

    New models for the delivery of ART to patients with HIV in Sub-Saharan Africa are reducing the burden of care for both patients and healthcare workers. One model presented at the Controlling the HIV Epidemic With Antiretrovirals Summit 2016 in Geneva changed the delivery of treatment by creating clubs that were not only treatment distribution points, but also community support centers. The idea caught on quickly.

    October 18, 2016
    Medscape

  • Beyond Tuskegee: a case for a racial justice agenda in treatment and research

    The Tuskegee Syphilis study remains a primary citation in both the scientific literature and popular conversations to explain the reluctance of African Americans to engage with the US healthcare system.....Unfortunately, this places the onus of health disparities onto African Americans, and not on the systems responsible for both the legacy of mistrust of health care and biomedical research and the continued inequalities in access to care.

    October 17, 2016
    TAG

  • CDC calls on doctors to pitch HPV shots as cancer prevention, not STD protection

    Shot-makers and health organizations have been laboring to boost lagging HPV vaccination rates, and now the CDC is weighing in again: Doctors should talk up the vaccines' ability to prevent deadly cancers, rather than dwelling on STD prevention, as a way to persuade skeptical parents to protect their kids.

    October 17, 2016
    Fierce Pharma

  • Global burden of disease report shows gains made from HIV response, work that remains to respond to infectious disease

    Global life expectancy has increased by 10.2 years since 1980, with the most marked increases occurring...in Sub-Saharan Africa, where expansion of antiretroviral therapy and prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV have expanded life expectancy by more than 10 years in countries with the highest HIV burdens,... according to the Global Burden of Disease report published in The Lancet.

    October 17, 2016
    Science Speaks

  • PrEP and sex workers: a chance to do better

    Finally, we have a highly effective HIV prevention method that isn’t a condom!...Given its effectiveness, one might expect PrEP to be widely used among sex workers. But it isn’t. Why?...Very few health-care providers create an environment in which sex workers feel comfortable discussing their occupational, as well as personal, health, and safety needs....The solution...is staring us right in the face. It’s just a matter of being willing to respect those classified as not respectable.

    October 17, 2016
    Rewire News

  • Percentage of Hispanics receiving prompt HIV care below national target

    The percentage of Hispanics with HIV in the United States and its territories receiving medical care within the first 90 days of their diagnosis is below the goal established by the National HIV/AIDS Strategy to link 85% of the population to care. Although Hispanics represent only 16% of the U.S. population, they accounted for 23% of HIV diagnoses in 2014, according to the CDC. In addition, they are less likely to receive care and achieve viral suppression compared with whites.

    October 14, 2016
    Healio

  • Crohn’s disease drug produces long-lasting viral undetectability and T-cell restoration off treatment in monkeys

    Scientists from Emory University have used a monkey-adapted version of vedolizumab (Entyvio), used to treat gut inflammation, to produce persistent viral load control and T-cell restoration in monkeys taken off ART....The researchers are uncertain why the drug works, but saw increases in a kind of Natural Killer cell that appears enabled by the drug to deal with HIV infection better, and an immune response to HIV envelope protein that resembles one of the responses seen in the RV144 HIV vaccine trial.

    October 14, 2016
    HIV Vaccine
    aidsmap

  • NIH recognizes LGBTQ community as 'Health Disparity Population'

    In an effort to begin the process of rectifying health-related issues that disproportionately affect the LGBTQ community, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced on Thursday they will formally designate "sexual and gender minorities (SGMs) as a health disparity population for NIH research."

    October 14, 2016
    NBC News

  • Unique South African children may chart new path for HIV vaccines

    An extremely rare subset of HIV-positive children can live with the virus well enough to stay healthy for years. Now, the world’s largest study into how these children fend off sickness may have unlocked important clues that may influence the world’s quest for a vaccine.

    October 14, 2016
    Bhekisisa

  • Experiment in monkeys raises hopes of “functional cure” for HIV

    A new drug combination helped stave off a monkey version of HIV for nearly two years after stopping all treatments....The treatment involved standard HIV drugs...plus an experimental antibody that hits the same target as Takeda Pharmaceutical's Entyvio, approved in [over] 50 countries for ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease. The findings are promising enough that the NIH, which funded the research, have begun testing the Takeda drug, known generically as vedolizumab, in people newly infected with HIV.

    October 13, 2016
    Reuters

  • A drug used to treat Crohn’s disease could suppress HIV, monkey study suggests STAT, 13 October 2016

    The drug, vedolizumab, appears to have reduced simian immunodeficiency virus, or SIV, to virtually undetectable levels in infected macaques and kept them there for two years, even after they were taken off antiretroviral therapy, said senior author Aftab Ansari. “These monkeys are basically controlling the virus themselves,” said Ansari, a pathologist at Emory University.

    October 13, 2016
    STAT

  • STDs hit historic high: CDC

    The combined total of reported chlamydia, gonorrhea, and syphilis cases was more than 1.8 million in 2015, the CDC said in its annual Sexually Transmitted Disease Surveillance Report,...probably an underestimate since most STD cases are undiagnosed and untreated. But the treated cases have reached an all-time -- and expensive -- high: nearly $16 billion annually. The reported incidence...rose from 2014 by 5.9% for chlamydia, 12.8% for gonorrhea, and a whopping 19% for syphilis.

    October 10, 2016
    MedPage Today

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