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27 October 2017 VOLUME 18 ISSUE 43

Media Coverage

  • From opioids to HIV — a public health threat in Trump country

    The next HIV epidemic in America is likely brewing in rural areas suffering under the nationwide opioid crisis, with many of the highest risk communities in deep red states that voted for President Donald Trump. Federal and state health officials say they are unprepared for such an outbreak, and don’t have the programs or the funding to deal with a surge in HIV cases. And given how little screening for HIV there is in some rural counties, they worry it may have already begun.

    October 25, 2017
    General
    Politico

  • Key legislator tells Trump officials to back off on proposed overhead spending cap for NIH

    An influential legislator wants President Donald Trump’s administration and fellow Republicans to drop the notion of capping overhead costs on grants funded by the NIH. And yesterday that lawmaker, Representative Tom Cole (R–OK), used his clout as chairman of the appropriations subcommittee that funds NIH to administer a dose of what he hopes will be preventive medicine.

    October 25, 2017
    General
    Science

  • Once daily single-tablet HIV-1 therapy achieves primary endpoint

    The primary endpoint of Janssen Pharmaceuticals' Phase III AMBER clinical trial was achieved, showing that its daily single-tablet regimen as a treatment for patients with previously untreated HIV-1 was well tolerated and highly effective. The regimen consists of a combination of darunavir, cobicistat, emtricitabine and tenofovir alafenamide.

    October 25, 2017
    Treatment
    MD Magazine

  • Are HIV and AIDS poised for a comeback?

    "Current trends in HIV drug resistance are very concerning," said Dr. Chris Beyrer, lead author of an overview on global HIV drug resistance. "Resistance levels have been found to be highest in ART-exposed infants and children, a real concern since children are already among the least-treated age group in many countries"....The research team advocates more focus on prevention...[and that]...those already infected but not yet treated should be given access to newer [antiretroviral] drugs...that have "higher genetic barriers to resistance."

    October 25, 2017
    Treatment
    HealthDay News

  • Who is on the shortlist for Global Fund's new executive director?

    After a difficult start to its search for a new executive director..., the board of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria announced Monday the latest set of candidates....The list includes an eclectic mix of candidates with diverse backgrounds....Two of the candidates have extensive experience in the financial industry;...the other two have spent the bulk of their careers working in global health. Three finalists are men, and one woman.

    October 24, 2017
    General
    Devex

  • Take your WHO job and …

    Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe has news for the director of the World Health Organization: He didn’t want the job that Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus gave to him and then quickly took away. Tedros appointed Mugabe on 18 October as a WHO goodwill ambassador for noncommunicable diseases in Africa and then, following an uproar from the medical community and human rights groups, rescinded the posting 4 days later.

    October 24, 2017
    General
    Science

  • No Foreign Office takeover of international aid budget, says Priti Patel

    The international development secretary has rejected speculation about a takeover of her department by the foreign office....Priti Patel was asked about concerns over a creeping merger of the international development department (DfID) with the FCO. She said: “DfID is a standalone government department....It’s important to recognise that 74% of overseas development assistance rests with DfID and the rest in other departments."

    October 24, 2017
    General
    Guardian

  • Elton John calls Georgia lawmaker’s questions on quarantining HIV patients ‘horrific’ and ‘ill-informed’

    Georgia State Rep. Betty Price, wife of former health and human services secretary Tom Price, has said that she was being intentionally “provocative” while making her much-criticized comments on whether HIV patients could legally be quarantined. Well, her strategy seems to have worked like gangbusters — among those provoked was singer Elton John, who released a statement Monday castigating the Republican lawmaker.

    October 23, 2017
    General
    Washington Post

  • What we’re reading: Who?! for WHO goodwill ambassador?, new routes to UNAIDS data, and the costs of fighting, neglecting HIV

    Choice of Mugabe as WHO goodwill envoy shocks, baffles....Director General rescinds Goodwill Ambassador appointment--Additional $120B needed to meet Federal HIV/AIDS Goals by 2020....[R]edesigned UNAIDS website includes three main portals--“data,” “topics” and “countries”--to ease navigation across the site, with enhancements...to include AIDSinfo database and the Key Population Atlas links.

    October 23, 2017
    General
    Science Speaks

  • Oral sex, smoking increase men's HPV risk

    Men who smoked and had five or more lifetime oral sex partners had the highest prevalence of oral oncogenic human papilloma virus (HPV) infection (14.9%). Among women, smoking was not a significant risk factor, and multiple oral sex partners only modestly increased the prevalence of oral oncogenic HPV infection from 0.7% to 1.5%, reported researchers led by Amber D'Souza, PhD, of Johns Hopkins University.

    October 23, 2017
    MedPage Today

  • Georgia lawmaker suggests quarantining people with HIV

    State Rep. Betty Price, a Republican from Roswell, suggested quarantining people living with HIV during a House study committee meeting on Georgians' Barriers to Access to Adequate Health Care. Price – a medical doctor and wife of Dr. Tom Price, the former Secretary of Health & Human Services – asked if quarantining people was an option given how much the state spends on care for people with HIV.

    October 20, 2017
    General
    Project Q Atlanta

  • Giving away billions as fast as they can

    ...In a matter of years, a new crop of ultra-wealthy Americans has eclipsed the old guard of philanthropic titans...[and] are upending long-established norms in the staid world of big philanthropy.... “They have a problem-solving mentality rather than a stewardship mentality,” said David Callahan, founder of the website Inside Philanthropy and author of The Givers, a book about today’s major donors. “They are not saving their money for a rainy day. They want to have impact now.”

    October 20, 2017
    General
    New York Times

  • Rand Paul takes a poke at U.S. peer-review panels

    New legislation introduced this week by Senator Rand Paul (R–KY) would fundamentally alter how grant proposals are reviewed at every federal agency by adding public members with no expertise in the research being vetted....The legislation also calls for all federal grant applications to be made public.

    October 19, 2017
    General
    Science

  • New research opens the door to 'functional cure' for HIV

    In findings that open the door to a completely different approach to curing HIV infections, scientists from the Florida campus of The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have for the first time shown that a...[derivative of a natural compound called didehydro-Cortistatin A (dCA)] effectively suppresses production of the virus in chronically infected cells....[This..."Block-and-Lock"] approach blocks reactivation of the virus in cells, even during treatment interruptions, and locks HIV into durable state of latency.

    October 17, 2017
    Cure
    Science Daily

  • PrEP program offers cost and clinical benefits

    A program introducing pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) for men who have sex with men could be cost effective and have real clinical impact, a British modeling study found,...potentially [saving] the country approximately £1 billion in HIV care by the end of year 40....Moreover, the program could...cut new cases of HIV infection by a quarter and lead to more quality-adjusted life years for persons living with HIV, the [researchers] wrote in the Lancet Infectious Diseases.

    October 17, 2017
    PrEP
    MedPage Today

Published Research

  • A new public health order for Africa's health security

    On July 3, 2017, African heads of state and government issued a declaration and committed to accelerating implementation of the 2005 International Health Regulations (IHR) and tasked the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC), the African Union Commission (AUC), and WHO with supporting the venture....Here we argue that a new public health order should address two broad categories of barrier that have challenged implementation of IHR (2005)...: health systems and systems for health.

    November 1, 2017
    General
    Lancet

  • Cardiovascular disease in HIV infected persons; HIV-related cardiovascular disease: closing the gap in mortality

    This series of review articles outlines the complex cause of HIV-related cardiovascular diseases (CVD), particularly interactions of viral factors, complications of antiviral therapy such as metabolic derangement, and chronic systemic inflammation....CVD risk management in patients living with HIV (PLHIV) may be optimized by drawing on existing knowledge of chronic systemic diseases which may open up new concepts in treatment and address current shortfalls in cardiovascular management of PLHIV.

    November 1, 2017
    General
    Current Opinion in HIV & AIDS

  • HIV and antenatal care in Sri Lanka: a global health success

    In 2002, prevention of MTCT of HIV began in Sri Lanka....In 2015, there was one case of MTCT of HIV among the 18 pregnant women who tested positive. Last year there were none, and so far this year, none have been recorded. But although Sri Lanka has high literacy and a robust, easily accessible health system, HIV is still shrouded in stigma and discrimination.

    November 1, 2017
    General
    Lancet Infectious Diseases

  • The WHO public health approach to HIV treatment and care: looking back and looking ahead

    Conclusion: Compared with a decade ago, there is now a far broader range of diagnostic and therapeutic options to respond to HIV, and more nuanced understanding of the varying challenges faced by different population groups in different epidemiological settings. Nevertheless, the public health approach remains as relevant as ever, and implementation of its key principles to ART delivery will bring countries closer to the goals of controlling the HIV epidemic and providing universal health coverage.

    October 20, 2017
    Treatment
    Lancet Infectious Diseases

  • Patterns and rates of viral evolution in HIV-1 subtype B infected females and males

    We conducted an intensive analysis of HIV-1...evolution taken over the first 6–11 years of infection from 8 Women’s Interagency HIV Study (WIHS) participants who had not received ART,...compared to similar data previously collected from men....[Our] findings strongly suggest that sex differences in HIV-1 disease progression attributed to immune system composition and sensitivities are not revealed by, nor do they impact, global patterns of viral evolution, the latter of which proceeds similarly in women and men.

    October 18, 2017
    General
    PLOS

  • Cost-effectiveness of pre-exposure prophylaxis for HIV prevention in men who have sex with men in the UK: a modelling study and health economic evaluation

    Introduction of...a PrEP programme with around 4000 MSM initiated on PrEP by the end of the first year and almost 40,000 by the end of the 15th year, would result in a total cost saving (£1.0 billion, discounted), avert 25% of HIV infections (42%...directly because of PrEP), and lead to a gain of 40,000 discounted Quality Adjusted Life Years (QALY) over an 80-year time horizon.This analysis suggests that the introduction of a PrEP programme for MSM in the UK is cost-effective and possibly cost-saving in the long term.

    October 17, 2017
    PrEP, Treatment
    Lancet Infectious Diseases

  • Dating violence against HIV-infected youth in South Africa: associations with sexual risk behavior, medication adherence, and mental health

    A fifth of perinatal HIV-infected participants reported physical and/or sexual intimate partner violence (IPV) in the past year; a third reported lifetime IPV. Childhood adversity was common and positively associated with IPV. Past-year physical and/or sexual IPV was positively correlated with high risk sex, pregnancy, poor medication adherence to ART, depression and substance abuse....HIV clinics should consider integrating primary IPV prevention interventions, instituting routine IPV screening, and co-locating services for victims of violence.

    October 14, 2017
    General
    JAIDS Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes

  • Identifying the intersection of alcohol, adherence and sex in HIV positive men on ART treatment in India using an Adapted Timeline Follow-Back (A-TLFB) procedure

    Data are drawn from a survey of behavior, knowledge and attitudes, and a 30-day TLFB assessment of multiple risk behaviors adapted for the Indian context, administered to 940 alcohol-consuming, HIV-positive men on ART at the baseline...of a multilevel, multi-centric intervention study.... Moving beyond simple drinking-adherence correlational analysis, the A-TLFB offers improved recall probes and...opportunity to identify types of risky days and tailor behavioral modification to reduce alcohol consumption, nonadherence and risky sex on those days.

    October 9, 2017
    Treatment
    AIDS and Behavior

  • Fungal infections in HIV/AIDS

    Fungi contribute greatly to opportunistic infections in patients with late-stage HIV infection. This is the first in a series of eight papers about fungal infections. In this Series paper, we review the epidemiology and progress in diagnosis and therapy for these four major systemic fungal pathogens in patients with HIV/AIDS. We cite the most relevant recent papers, [with] additional supplementary references available online.

    July 31, 2017
    General
    Lancet Infectious Diseases

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

    Of 118 women who injected drugs (WWID), almost two thirds reported condomless sex, one third reported transactional sex, and one third reported sharing injection equipment. Increased PrEP awareness was associated with reported transactional sex and having conversation about HIV prevention at a syringe exchange program (SEP)....[Our] findings suggest that sex work and SEP networks are efficient means for disseminating messaging about prevention materials such as PrEP [and] recommend [their use] to increase PrEP awareness.

    June 29, 2017
    PrEP
    Harm Reduction Journal

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