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7 JULY 2023 VOLUME 25 ISSUE 27

Media Coverage

  • PEPFAR at 20 — A Game-Changing Impact on HIV in Africa

    The US President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief has driven enormous gains in HIV treatment and prevention. But challenges associated with addressing HIV/AIDS in Africa remain.

    July 6, 2023
    General
    The New England Journal for Medicine

  • Invisible, But Not Absent

    The dead are invisible, not absent (St. Augustine of Hippo; 354-430) - the fact that someone is dead may not mean they are alive, but does not mean they do not exist (Julian Barnes, Levels of Life, 2013). Named lectures invite wide-ranging reflections relevant to contributions of person most often no longer with us.

    July 6, 2023
    General
    AIDS

  • Couples Who Test for HIV Together Likely to Utilize Other Health Services

    If couples test for HIV together, will it improve uptake of health services? A couples-focused intervention aimed at promoting couples’ HIV testing and counselling has found that it will. Igugu Lethu, a joint study between the Human Sciences Research Council and the University of Southampton, recruited 218 couples from Sweetwaters in KwaZulu Natal. The community experiences high rates of infectious diseases such as HIV and TB, as well as non-communicable disease.

    July 6, 2023
    General
    Health-e News

  • Researchers Identify an Enzyme That Plays a Critical Role in the Late Stages of HIV Replication

    Researchers at Johns Hopkins Medicine, in collaboration with researchers at the National Institutes of Health, report that two new studies in mice with a humanized immune system and human cell lines have identified an enzyme that plays a critical role in the late stages of HIV replication.

    July 6, 2023
    Treatment
    News Medical

  • CATALYST HIV Research Study Launched In Zimbabwe

    The three-year, multi-country implementation study builds on decades of research related to pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) for HIV prevention and is aimed at assessing the delivery of multiple PrEP methods to women in real-world settings in five African countries, including Zimbabwe.

    July 5, 2023
    General
    Health Times

  • Women and Girls To Benefit From Multiple HIV Prevention Options

    Women and girls will have more HIV prevention options to choose from after the Ministry of Health announced a five-year study project that will present the choices to users for free. The products, according to the Health ministry’s acting Director General Patrick Amoth will improve and increase the uptake of HIV prevention products while breaking HIV transmission.

    July 5, 2023
    PrEP
    Nation

  • First Pediatric Study To Test Neutralizing Antibodies Against HIV Shows Promise

    When children living with HIV are injected with neutralizing antibodies, the treatment can suppress cells that contain the virus and are capable of reactivating, an early-stage trial found. Details of the trial, documented in a study published Wednesday in Science Translational Medicine, show that broadly neutralizing antibodies can boost the protective effects of antiretroviral drugs. This suggests that antibody drugs can be used as supplements or even as alternative treatments for HIV in children.

    July 5, 2023
    General
    STAT

  • UNAIDS Uses Simplistic Gender Norms To Inform Its HIV Prevention Guidelines

    UNAIDS’ HIV prevention guidelines rely on reductive gender stereotypes placing a burden on girls and women, according to Dr Catherine Merriman of Queen Mary University London and Dr Kevin Deane of the Open University. The researchers found an overwhelming absence of targeted and precise guidelines for engaging boys and men, while girls and women were categorised as victims.

    July 5, 2023
    aidsmap

  • CDC Study Finds “Jarringly” High Rates of Uncured Hepatitis C

    The Viral Hepatitis National Strategic Plan for the United States set a goal to have at least 80 percent of individuals with hepatitis C virus (HCV) to achieve viral clearance by the year 2030. In their Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR), the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) analyzed the HCV clearance cascade for 2013–2022 to track progress toward the elimination goal.

    July 5, 2023
    General
    Contagion Live

  • Long-Acting, Injected HIV Meds Can Help Tough-to-Treat Patients

    For nearly three decades, daily antiretroviral pills have offered patients living with HIV a highly effective way to keep their infection under control. But some patients, particularly those beset by homelessness, drug addiction and/or mental illness, find it very difficult to follow a daily pill routine due to the “competing priorities in their life, like getting food and shelter, or if there are conditions such as depression, anxiety or substance use,” explained study author Dr. Monica Gandhi, director of the USCF-Bay Area Center for AIDS Research (CFAR).

    July 5, 2023
    Treatment
    US News

  • Why SA Pilots of HIV Prevention Shots and Vaginal Rings Have Been Delayed

    Last year it was reported that pilot projects testing out a new HIV prevention injection and a vaginal ring in South Africa would start early in 2023. Yet, as delegates gathered for the 11th SA AIDS Conference in Durban recently, those pilots hadn't even begun, write Alicestine October and Elri Voigt for Spotlight. The latest estimates from Thembisa, the leading mathematical model of HIV in South Africa, show new HIV infections are declining, but at 164 000 in 2022, are still high.

    July 5, 2023
    General
    Medical Brief

  • A New HIV Drug Is Coming to Africa – It Could Be Game-Changing

    Long-lasting injections to protect people from HIV are set to be rolled out across Africa, potentially revolutionising the continent’s fight against the disease. Treatment for HIV has improved enormously over the last 30 years, with retroviral drugs able to suppress the virus in those who carry it and oral pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) widely available in tablet form to prevent infection.

    July 5, 2023
    PrEP
    Telegraph

  • Would You Use an HIV-Preventing Enema or Rectal PrEP?

    Researchers continue to look at ways to help protect people from acquiring HIV. Some recent studies have looked at methods to quickly get HIV-preventing drugs into your body when they’re most needed. Although a daily tablet is the most common way of taking PrEP, not everyone wants to take a pill every day of their life. Also, in some parts of the world, including parts of the US, access to PrEP is not straightforward.

    July 4, 2023
    PrEP
    Queerty

  • New HIV Treatments and Guidelines To Benefit Children, With More Advances on the Horizon

    The eleventh SA Aids conference, recently held in Durban, highlighted the worrying fact that key HIV numbers such as treatment coverage are much lower in children than in adults. But conference delegates also heard about new treatments and guidelines that will make life easier for kids and the exciting potential of several new long-acting experimental treatments.

    July 4, 2023
    General
    Daily Maverick

  • Disparities in Adherence to Retesting Guidelines in Women With Trichomonas vaginalis Infection

    Trichomonas vaginalis is the most prevalent nonviral sexually transmitted infection in the United States. Numerous studies have shown disproportionately higher prevalence rates in Non-Hispanic Black women. Due to high rates of reinfection, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends retesting women treated for trichomoniasis. Despite these national guidelines, there are few studies examining adherence to retesting recommendations for patients with trichomoniasis.

    July 3, 2023
    General
    Physician's Weekly

  • Meet the Company Trying To Make At-Home HIV Prevention Easy

    As a young woman, Daphne Chen would leave many interactions with healthcare providers about her sexual health that made her feel judged. Throughout her twenties, Chen found non-judgmental support from friends, and wanted to bring a no-nonsense sexual health approach to more people. So, in 2020, Chen and longtime friend Stephanie Estey founded telehealth company TBD Health, focused on offering sex-positive healthcare via at-home STD tests.

    July 1, 2023
    General
    Fast Company

  • Democrats Introduce Bill to Make PrEP Available to More Americans

    Democrats in the US House of Representatives and the Senate have joined together to reintroduce the PrEP Access and Coverage Act of 2023 to improve the uptake of PrEP to prevent HIV. Minnesota Sen. Tina Smith and California Rep. Adam Schiff are leading the effort.

    July 1, 2023
    PrEP
    Advocate

  • Hunter College Professor Sarit Golub Named Distinguished Professor

    Hunter College Professor Sarit Golub — whose insights on sexual behavior and stigma revolutionized how we deliver health care to people affected by HIV/AIDS — has been named a distinguished professor by the City University of New York for her extraordinary achievements in Behavioral Psychology. Hunter College President Jennifer J. Raab said that the honor for Golub was more evidence of the outsized impact of Hunter researchers on the nation’s health and well-being.

    June 30, 2023
    General
    Patch

  • A Looming Penicillin Shortage Threatens Pregnant Adults With Syphilis and Their Newborns

    Pfizer announced last week that it expects to run out of a key drug for treating syphilis in the near future — a looming problem that health professionals say could exacerbate syphilis rates, widen racial disparities in sexually transmitted diseases, and stymie global access to the antibiotic, especially within lower-income countries.

    June 22, 2023
    STI Vaccines
    STAT

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