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27 JANUARY 2023 VOLUME 25 ISSUE 4

Media Coverage

  • Decriminalization of Sex Work Can Help Prevent HIV

    South Africa has a deep history of pain, rooted in gross human rights violations under the apartheid regime. The preamble to the South African Constitution of 1996 identifies human rights, equality and freedom as founding democratic values of South African society. As a young woman, legal scholar, and sex worker advocate, it is heart wrenching to see that even beyond 1996, we still have laws in place which allow for discrimination, stigmatisation, and violence against certain members of society.

    January 27, 2023
    General
    Health-e News

  • In South Africa, Much More Than an Investment in HIV

    Quarraisha Abdool Karim, professor in clinical epidemiology at Columbia University, and president of The World Academy of Sciences, spoke with Think Global Health about the arc of HIV/AIDS-fighting efforts in South Africa, her home country. She also discussed her research and leadership over the past thirty-four years, how PEPFAR and the Global Fund have altered South Africa's health landscape, and the final lap in the battle to eradicate HIV/AIDS.

    January 27, 2023
    General
    Think Global Health

  • HIV at Center of Latest Culture War After Tennessee Rejects Federal Funds

    Tennessee has rejected millions of dollars from the federal government for HIV/AIDS prevention — a move that public health experts worry will politicize the response to the disease and has the potential to destabilize decades of progress in getting the epidemic under control.

    January 26, 2023
    General
    Washington Post

  • NACA Blames Rise in HIV/AIDS Death on Failure To Take Medication

    The Director General of the National Agency for the Control of AIDS (NACA), Dr. Gambo Aliyu, has said failure to take medication is responsible for the number of deaths the country is recording now from Human Immuno-deficiency Virus (HIV)/Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS).

    January 26, 2023
    Treatment
    The Guardian

  • Post-Exposure Prophylaxis for STI Prevention for Individuals With HIV, On PrEP

    The use of doxycycline as post-exposure prophylaxis is efficacious at reducing incident sexually transmitted infections (STIs) among men who have sex with men (MSM) as well as among transgender women (TGW) who are living with HIV or on pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), according to the results of a recent study presented at International AIDS Conference 2022.

    January 26, 2023
    General
    Consultant 360

  • Medicare Seeks Public Input on Covering PrEP to Prevent HIV

    The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) is considering national Medicare coverage of pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) to prevent HIV, notably the long-acting injectable Apretude, which is administered to people at risk for HIV every two months. As part of the analysis, CMS is seeking input from the public, particularly comments that include scientific evidence.

    January 26, 2023
    General
    POZ Magazine

  • Why Inventing a Vaccine for AIDS Is Tougher Than for COVID

    The four-decades long effort to create an HIV vaccine suffered a blow last week with news that Janssen Pharmaceuticals, a division of Johnson & Johnson, was discontinuing the only current late-stage clinical trial of a vaccine. Results showed it to be ineffective. "I was disappointed in the outcome," says Mitchell Warren, executive director of AVAC, an organization that advocates for HIV prevention to end AIDS.

    January 26, 2023
    HIV Vaccine
    NPR

  • HPV Self-Testing a Game-Changer for Cervical Cancer Screening

    According to the World Health Organisation, globally, cervical cancer ranks as the fourth most frequently diagnosed cancer and the fourth leading cause of cancer death in women and yet it is a preventable disease. The WHO has a global strategy to eliminate cervical cancer.

    January 25, 2023
    General
    Standard Media

  • Chris Olsen Shares He's Had Chlamydia 3 Times, Wants to End Stigma

    Popular gay TikTok creator Chris Olsen recently shared a video with his nearly 10 million followers revealing that he’s gotten chlamydia three times. “End the stigma!” the TikToker exclaimed. As the video went on, Olsen recalled his latest visit to the clinic where he usually tests for sexually transmitted infections (STIs). A nurse who’s done tests on him in the past mentioned that she hadn’t seen him in a while at the clinic. “Yeah, it’s been a little dry down there,” he replied.

    January 25, 2023
    General
    Out Magazine

  • PEPFAR in a Global Democratic Recession

    On its twentieth anniversary, the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) is arguably one of the most effective foreign assistance initiatives in history in terms of results—lives saved. While the past two decades have witnessed PEPFAR's achievements, they've also seen democratic backsliding, as documented by Freedom House, a nonprofit organization that tracks democracy, political freedom, and human rights around the globe.

    January 25, 2023
    General
    Think Global Health

  • Does Cannabis Use Impair Treatment Adherence?

    Older people living with HIV who used cannabis within the past month were about twice as likely to sometimes miss doses of their antiretroviral medications, according to a study published in Open Forum Infectious Diseases. “[O]ur findings suggest that regular cannabis use by older people with HIV is associated with a greater risk of imperfect ART [antiretroviral therapy] adherence” compared with not using cannabis, the study authors concluded.

    January 25, 2023
    Treatment
    POZ Magazine

  • Study Investigates the Link Between Lifestyle Factors and Risk of HPV Infection

    Human well-being has been linked to physical activity, diet balance, sleep quality, depression and anxiety. This cross-sectional study co-authored by Dr. Yantao Li, BGI Genomics, published in Sec. Gynecological Oncology investigated the association between these lifestyle factors and the risk of human papillomavirus (HPV) infection. HPV is a virus that can cause different types of cancer, including cervical cancer.

    January 25, 2023
    HPV Vaccines
    News Medical

  • Fauci in Context: A BreakingMED Special Feature

    As the fabled ball dropped on Times Square at the stroke of midnight Dec. 31, 2022, it signaled not just the birth of a new year, but also the end of an era—the Fauci era. On Nov. 2, 1984, Anthony Stephen Fauci, MD, was appointed director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). On Dec. 31, after 13,939 days in office, he stepped down. Those 38 years, one month, and 30 days made him the longest-serving director of any of the 27 institutes and centers that comprise the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

    January 25, 2023
    General
    Breaking Med

  • The Only Late-Stage HIV Vaccine Study (Mosaico) Just Tanked. What’s Next?

    It was the big, sad HIV news of mid-January: Janssen Pharmaceuticals’ Mosaico study of an experimental HIV vaccine―which included nearly 4,000 gay men and transgender people in Latin America, the US, and Europe―was coming to a halt because the vaccine was a dud. Though exact numbers have yet to be released, we will likely soon learn that this was determined by the fact that HIV transmission rates in the study’s two arms—vaccine and placebo, with people having the option of being on PrEP in both arms—were basically the same; meaning that the vaccine was showing no efficacy.

    January 25, 2023
    HIV Vaccine
    TheBody

  • Q&A: More HIV Self-Tests Needed To Bolster Market, Drive Down Cost, Increase Access

    The only available self-test for HIV was approved by the FDA in 2012. Since then, no company has applied for FDA clearance for a similar test. In a paper published in Clinical Infectious Diseases, Stephany Ma, MPH, research program manager at the John Hopkins University School of Medicine, and colleagues highlighted the role and importance of these tests, as well as possibly reclassifying HIV self-tests from class III to class II moving forward.

    January 24, 2023
    General
    Healio

  • Grassroots AIDS Activists Fought for and Won Affordable HIV Treatments Around the World – But PEPFAR Didn’t Change Governments and Pharma

    The President’s Emergency Program for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR, has revolutionized the fight against global AIDS over the last 20 years. In that time, the US program has brought antiretroviral treatment to nearly 19 million people living with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS; prevented mother-to-child transmission of HIV for 2.8 million babies; and brought HIV testing and prevention services to millions of others.

    January 24, 2023
    General
    The Conversation

  • A Slight Increase in Mpox Cases Across the Globe, Along With an Increase in Deaths

    Almost 85,000 laboratory-confirmed monkeypox (Mpox) cases and 80 deaths have been reported between January 1, 2022, and January 15, 2023, to the World Health Organization (WHO) in 110 countries, areas, or territories in the six WHO regions. A total of 11 countries have reported an increase in the weekly number of cases between January 2-15, 2023, with the highest increase reported in Mexico. However, 78 of the 110 countries have not reported new cases for over 21 days.

    January 24, 2023
    General
    News Medical

  • PEPFAR's Twentieth Anniversary Might Be Its Last

    Twenty years ago, on January 28, 2003, President George W. Bush gave a State of the Union address that changed the world. Congress had authorized use of force in Iraq three months earlier, and the president used the speech to reinforce a flawed and faulty rationale for extending the "war on terror." But in the next breath, he also launched a war on a virus—HIV—and unveiled a strategy for combating this modern plague that has, over twenty years, proved as successful and prescient as his military war proved disastrous.

    January 24, 2023
    General
    Think Global Health

  • Activists Urge HIV Policy Reversal

    AIDS activists are urging the government to revise a new Ministry of Health policy that bars clinics operated by civil society groups from providing HIV treatments to the public.

    January 23, 2023
    Bangkok Post

  • Twice-Yearly Sunlenca Works Well for Initial HIV Treatment

    Sunlenca (lenacapavir), a long-acting injectable medication recently approved for treatment-experienced people with multidrug-resistant HIV, also works well for people starting antiretroviral therapy for the first time, according to a recent report in The Lancet HIV.Results from the CALIBRATE trial showed that around 90 percent of study participants who used Sunlenca—either as daily pills or injections every six months—in combination with other antiretrovirals achieved an undetectable viral load.

    January 23, 2023
    Treatment
    POZ Magazine

  • ‘Clean’ or ‘Dirty?’: Why Sex Educators Say We Need To Change How We Talk About STIs

    Sexually transmitted infections (STIs) are more common than you think. Yet despite the fact that half of all new STI cases in the US are found in young adults ages 15 to 24, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)— and positive cases have reached an all-time high for the sixth year in a row — there are still many who find the topic too taboo and shameful to discuss.

    January 23, 2023
    General
    Yahoo News

  • PEPFAR Meets Climate Change

    Five years ago, for the fifteenth anniversary of the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), I opined that PEPFAR's impact on the HIV/AIDS pandemic "places it in the pantheon of iconic US policy efforts, such as the Marshall Plan and the Apollo space program." PEPFAR's success and stature help explain why, on the cusp of PEPFAR's twentieth anniversary, the Joe Biden administration has formulated the President's Emergency Plan for Adaptation and Resilience (PREPARE) for a different global health crisis—climate change.

    January 23, 2023
    General
    Think Global Health

  • Women on ART With High HIV Viral Load at Increased Risk of Non-AIDS Comorbidities

    Women with HIV who had greater cumulative viremia had an increased risk of multimorbidity and developing five vascular-related non-AIDS comorbidities, according to a recent study. “In prior analyses evaluating the burden of non-AIDS comorbidities in women with and without HIV, we found that the overall burden of 10 comorbidities assessed was higher in women with vs. without HIV, and that comorbidity burden in women with HIV was primarily associated with traditional as opposed to HIV-related risk factors,” Lauren F.

    January 22, 2023
    Treatment
    Healio

  • Super Gonorrhea Has Reached the US

    Super gonorrhea has infected people in the United States for the first known time. This week, Massachusetts public health officials announced the discovery of two gonorrhea cases appearing to display increased resistance to all known antibiotic classes that can be used against it. These cases were thankfully still curable, but it’s the latest reminder that this common sexually transmitted infection is becoming a more serious threat.

    January 20, 2023
    General
    Gizmodo

  • Preexposure Prophylaxis Gives Good Results in Latin America

    Same-day initiation of preexposure prophylaxis (PrEP) against human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection is feasible in Latin America, with low early loss to follow-up, high adherence, and long-term engagement. However, questions regarding social and structural determinants of HIV vulnerability must be addressed to fully achieve the benefits of PrEP. These are the main findings of a prospective, single-arm, open-label, multicenter PrEP implementation study conducted in Brazil (14 sites), Mexico (four sites), and Peru (10 sites).

    January 20, 2023
    PrEP
    Medscape

  • Taking a Daily Oral PrEP or Switching to a Long-Acting Injectable Would Prevent HIV Infections 36 Percent and 44 Percent Respectively

    Investigators wanted to estimate the impact of PrEP regimens among men who have sex with men (MSM) in Atlanta, Georgia. They performed a mathematical modelling study for HPTN 083, and looked at long-acting injectable cabotegravir (CAB) and daily oral tenofovir disoproxil fumarate/emtricitabine (TDF/FTC) vs not taking PrEP.

    January 20, 2023
    PrEP
    Contagion Live

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