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28 August 2015 VOLUME 16 ISSUE 35

Media Coverage

  • HIV testing is down and STDs are up as New York City closes free clinics

    New York City has quietly shuttered its busiest STD clinic, and the city has cut hundreds of thousands of free HIV tests since 2010. City officials blame a shrinking budget, but AIDS activists say it’s putting many people at risk.

    August 27, 2015
    BuzzFeed

  • Gilead applies for PrEP approval in Canada

    Gilead Sciences has applied for approval of Truvada (tenofovir/emtricitabine) as pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) in Canada....If the country’s health ministry, Health Canada, approves the new indication for the antiretroviral (ARV), Canada would follow the United States to become only the second nation in the world to give the green light to this new means of preventing HIV.

    August 27, 2015
    aidsmeds

  • HIV prevention can help revive small town South africa

    All communities will benefit from lowering HIV infection rates through the economic growth that will accompany the reduction in new HIV infections. That’s the view of Marina Rifkin, an epidemiologist working as the Public Health Specialist at CareWorks, an HIV management organisation.

    August 27, 2015
    Spice4life

  • Comprehensive sex-ed laws vary widely across the United States

    2015 was a good year for national sex-ed expansion, shows a comprehensive new report by the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS). But advocates warn that the quality and quantity of education kids receive still differs dramatically from state to state....Sex-ed advocates said comprehensive sexuality education (CSE) goes way beyond teaching kids about abstinence, contraception, and HIV and other sexually transmitted infections.

    August 26, 2015
    POZ

  • Women with HIV still face obstacles to treatment

    A growing number of women infected with HIV are receiving treatment, but cultural and economic obstacles make staying on it a challenge, according to a new study sponsored by UN Women, the United Nations agency that deals with gender issues. For the first time, HIV-positive women are carrying out their own review of the barriers they and women like them face to accessing life-saving treatment.

    August 26, 2015
    UN Multimedia

  • HUD offers $9 million to provide stable housing to low-income victims of domestic violence living with HIV/AIDS

    To help prevent victims of domestic violence living with HIV/AIDS from falling into homelessness, the US Department of Housing and Urban Development is making more than $9 million available to state, local governments and non-profits through the VAWA/HOPWA Project Demonstration – a collaborative effort between HUD’s Office of HIVAIDS Housing and the Department of Justice’s Office of Violence Against Women.

    August 25, 2015
    RealEstateRama

  • ILO, partners empower people risking HIV infection along transport corridors

    The International Labour Organisation (ILO) in collaboration with other partners initiated a programme known as ‘corridor economic empowerment innovation fund', with the objective of economically empowering HIV vulnerable population along transport corridors in Tanzania. Speaking to The Guardian, National HIV/AIDS Coordinator with ILO Country Office Dar es Salaam, Getrude Sima said that they focused on the corridors because those areas are highly concentrated with different people, from different parts of Tanzania and beyond borders.

    August 25, 2015
    IPP Media

  • Ain't I a woman?: National HIV/AIDS Strategy fails sex workers, transgender women burdened by the criminal justice system

    Criminal justice reform is finally gaining some traction in the US, including bipartisan support for legislation such as the SAFE Justice Act that would keep many people charged with non-violent crimes from going to jail in the first place....Incarceration is associated with increased HIV risk, interference with medication regimens and poorer outcomes once infected, so the updated National HIV/AIDS Strategy would have been a great place to start. Unfortunately, this opportunity has been missed.

    August 25, 2015
    The Body

  • Longtime Cleveland duo gets $18.5 million to research AIDS/HIV

    Two longtime researchers at The Cleveland Clinic and Case Western Reserve University got $18.5 million from the Richard J. Fasenmyer Foundation for their continued research on HIV/AIDS. Dr. Leonard Calabrese has been studying the relationship between HIV/AIDS and autoimmune diseases with Dr. Michael Lederman for more than 30 years. He says their research raises questions about why patients who respond to treatment can still develop autoimmune diseases.

    August 25, 2015
    WKSU

  • Drug culture behind HIV wave engulfing Malaysian fishermen

    HIV infection rates in fishing communities in Africa and Asia are four to 14 times higher than those of the general population. While past studies associated this high prevalence with risky sexual behaviour among fishermen, a paper published in the journal PLoS ONE this month (5 August) finds that unsafe drug injections are to blame. The study surveyed 406 fishermen working on traditional or commercial vessels in Kuantan, on the east coast of Peninsular Malaysia, to examine which factors could explain this high prevalence.

    August 25, 2015
    SciDev.net

  • Pregnancy is a missed opportunity for HIV-infected women to gain control over condition

    Pregnancy could be a turning point for HIV-infected women, when they have the opportunity to manage their infection, prevent transmission to their new baby and enter a long-term pattern of maintenance of HIV care after giving birth--but most HIV-infected women aren't getting that chance. That is the major message from a pair of new studies in Philadelphia, one published in Clinical Infectious Diseases, the other in PLoS ONE.

    August 25, 2015
    Science Daily

  • Researchers use computers to test thousands of HIV vaccine variations

    More than 30 years have passed since the discovery of HIV and scientists are still struggling to develop a vaccine....Instead of finding an antibody to kill the virus, [researchers at Vanderbilt University] simply created one using a computer program.... Using a computer program called “Rosetta,” researchers were able to redesign and test it thousands of different ways before finding the one design that made the antibody four times stronger.

    August 24, 2015
    WNDU

  • New HIV diagnoses still prompt thoughts of suicide, shame

    Despite the fact that HIV is no longer a killer, the stigma associated with the virus remains high. About one in 10 people living with HIV report feeling suicidal in the last year, according South Africa’s first HIV stigma index released by the South African National AIDS Council at the country’s June SA AIDS conference.

    August 24, 2015
    Health-e News

  • Indian young adults at high risk of reproductive illnesses

    MediAngels.com today published findings of a study on reproductive health amongst Indian adolescents and found an alarming 4.9 percent rise in sexually transmitted infections just in the last four years,...particularly worrisome as our country has the highest world-over youth population....In fact, the study estimated that one out of every three individuals suffering from AIDS in India is an adolescent....The study was conducted amongst 21467 individuals, half from the top ten cities, the other half [from] small towns.

    August 23, 2015
    PR Urgent

  • How can we improve data sharing of biomedical research across the globe?

    With the globalization of biomedical research and growing concerns about possible pandemics of diseases such as HIV, SARS, and Ebola, international data-sharing practices are of growing interest to the biomedical science community. A new special journal issue [http://jre.sagepub.com/content/10/3.toc]...outlines the views of researchers and gatekeepers of biomedical research in India, Kenya, South Africa, Thailand, and Vietnam.

    August 21, 2015
    Science Daily

  • New ring can diagnose sexually transmitted diseases in a single test

    A ring with the ability to diagnose sexually transmitted diseases like syphilis, gonorrhea, chlamydia and trichomoniasis was designed by Ernesto Rodríguez Leal at a Mexican startup at Silicon Valley. The portable medical device called 'Hoope' is a ring that is placed in the thumb, contains a disposable cartridge with a retractable needle for single use and sends the data to a smartphone in less than a minute.

    August 21, 2015
    Science Daily

  • Ugandan gay men talk about why they do not always use condoms

    Gay men and other men who have sex with men in Uganda, who had not used a condom the last time they had anal sex with another man, were most likely to say that condoms not being strong enough for anal sex, lack of suitable lubricant and, in rural areas, lack of access to condoms were the most common reasons they did not use them....Alcohol was also mentioned frequently as a disinhibitor of condomless sex.

    August 21, 2015
    aidsmap

  • EMA validates R/F/TAF MAA for treatment of HIV-1

    Gilead Sciences has announced that the Marketing Authorisation Application for...R/F/TAF has been fully validated and is now under evaluation by the European Medicines Agency....TAF is a novel investigational nucleotide reverse transcriptase inhibitor that has demonstrated high antiviral efficacy at a dose less than one-tenth that of Gilead’s Viread (tenofovir disoproxil fumarate, TDF), as well as improved renal and bone laboratory parameters.

    August 21, 2015
    European Pharmaceutical Review

  • Janssen's new Prezcobix push urges HIV patients to share pics with their docs

    Janssen's Prezcobix campaign advocates a new way for potential patients to talk to their doctors: Snap a picture and share it....It's part of a campaign dubbed "Wisdom," which urges HIV patients not only to share pics with their physicians, but to share their insights about the disease. The national campaign includes digital and print, with outdoor ads running only in specific cities such as Chicago, San Francisco, Miami and New York.

    August 21, 2015
    Fierce Pharma

  • HIV-positive postpartum women who rapidly re-engage with HIV care more likely to have viral suppression in longer term

    HIV-positive women who recently gave birth have low rates of engagement with HIV care.... Retrospective analysis of 561 HIV-positive postpartum women in Philadelphia showed only 38% engaged with HIV care in the three months after delivery. Rates of retention in care and viral suppression...were also poor. However, early re-engagement with care after delivery was associated with better chances of staying in care and maintaining an undetectable viral load.

    August 19, 2015
    aidsmap

  • Low rates of engagement with HIV care among women who have recently given birth in Cape Town townships

    Only half of HIV-positive mothers in townships near Cape Town, South Africa, who received antenatal care and prevention of mother-to-child transmission services are receiving antiretroviral therapy 36 months after giving birth, investigators report in AIDS online....Almost all received PMTCT care but only a third were consistently linked to HIV care in the 36 months after giving birth, and only 53% were taking ART three years after the birth of their child. “These are disturbing data,” comment the investigators.

    August 18, 2015
    aidsmap

  • STDs pose major health threat to MSM

    Sexually transmitted diseases have become a significant public health challenge in the United States, and in particular, the burden of disease in men who have sex with men shows no signs of abating. Cases of primary and secondary syphilis are rising nationally, especially among MSM, according to the CDC’s 2013 National Data for Chlamydia, Gonorrhea, and Syphilis. Cases of chlamydia and gonorrhea declined slightly in the general population, but appear to be increasing for MSM.

    August 18, 2015
    Healio

  • Daily PrEP lowers hip, spine BMD in HIV-seronegative patients

    Researchers found a small but statistically significant decrease in bone mineral density [BMD] in hip and spine for HIV-seronegative patients taking Truvada daily for pre-exposure prophylaxis.... Kathleen Mulligan, University of California/San Francisco and colleagues wrote: “Bone loss in the spine tended to reverse, albeit not completely, after discontinuation of treatment. These results demonstrate an effect of FTC/TDF that is independent of HIV infection or other ART.”

    August 17, 2015
    Healio

  • New evidence that genetic differences may help explain inconsistent effectiveness of anti-Hiv drug

    The drug tenofovir is approved to treat and prevent HIV infection orally and is being investigated as a potential prophylactic drug that could be used topically. A study finds that the drug is processed differently by different cell types, suggesting that not all topical uses would have the same effectiveness. Research with human tissue and cells suggests that genetic variations, in addition to failure to comply with treatment regimens, may account for some failures of an anti-HIV drug to treat and prevent HIV infection.

    July 9, 2015
    Hopkins Medicine

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