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7 OCTOBER 2022 VOLUME 24 ISSUE 40

Media Coverage

  • An Advocate for Africa

    As Americans began to stir in the early morning hours of Thanksgiving Day 2021, a rapt international press corps was listening as a pony-tailed scientist in South Africa announced the identification of a worrisome new SARSCoV-2 variant. Tulio de Oliveira, a Brazilian-born bioinformatician, explained that many of the variant’s dozens of mutations might make it more immune evasive and contagious—and that it was spreading “very fast” in South Africa.

    October 7, 2022
    General
    Science Magazine

  • Uganda’s Ebola Outbreak Will Put Novel Vaccines to the Test

    A multipronged international effort has begun to pull out all the stops to launch trials of experimental Ebola vaccines in Uganda, which declared an outbreak of the deadly disease on 20 September. According to reports from Uganda’s health ministry and the World Health Organization (WHO), as of 2 October, the country had 43 confirmed and 19 probable cases, including 27 deaths. A trial of a vaccine candidate that’s furthest along in development could launch before the end of this month.

    October 7, 2022
    General
    Science Magazine

  • Back From the Brink

    On October 7, the governing board of the new World Bank-hosted Pandemic Preparedness and Response Financial Intermediary Fund (PPR-FIF) meets for the second time. The centerpiece of the Biden Administration's health security agenda, the fund will open its first funding window in November with a planned "launch" at the Group of Twenty (G20) meeting in Indonesia the same month.

    October 6, 2022
    General
    Think Global Health

  • Increased HIV Infection Linked to Pandemic-Related Access to PrEP

    Changes to HIV preexposure prophylaxis (PrEP) access during the COVID-19 pandemic were linked to higher rates of HIV infection among young sexual minority men and gender-diverse individuals who identified as Black and/or Hispanic/Latino, according to a national survey. "The public health crisis surrounding COVID-19 had clear impact on PrEP access and risk of HIV acquisition overall," said lead investigator Ethan Morgan, PhD, College of Nursing and the Infectious Disease Institute at The Ohio State University, in Columbus, Ohio.

    October 6, 2022
    PrEP
    Medscape

  • Improving Tuberculosis Prevention Programs Aimed at HIV Patients

    Structured leadership and management training for isoniazid preventive therapy (IPT) programs overseen by mid-level health managers boosted inter-district communication and collaboration, even if it did not substantially increase IPT initiation, according to a paper published in The Lancet HIV.

    October 6, 2022
    General
    Contagion Live

  • Report Says COVID-19 Pandemic Impacted Number of HIV Cases, Resources, Treatments

    A new report found that the COVID-19 pandemic has had a negative impact on the number of HIV cases in the country. That's because there was so much focus on fighting the pandemic, HIV testing and access to treatment were all halted for some time. The headline is one that many feared. New HIV cases in San Francisco increased for the first time in nine years.

    October 6, 2022
    General
    ABC7 News

  • A Bold Effort to Cure HIV—Using CRISPR

    In July, AN HIV-positive man became the first volunteer in a clinical trial aimed at using CRISPR gene editing to snip the AIDS-causing virus out of his cells. For an hour, he was hooked up to an IV bag that pumped the experimental treatment directly into his bloodstream. The one-time infusion is designed to carry the gene-editing tools to the man’s infected cells to clear the virus.

    October 5, 2022
    Cure
    Wired

  • ‘Like Copying a Louis Vuitton Handbag’: Big Pharma Hits Out at Africa’s Replica COVID-19 Vaccine

    When news broke that scientists had developed an effective vaccine against COVID-19, Emile Hendricks was living in a deprived suburb of Cape Town and studying for a degree in biotechnology. He thought he and his community would not have access to such a vaccine, or at the very least would be at the back of the queue.

    October 5, 2022
    General
    The Guardian

  • How a Select Few People Have Been Cured of HIV

    Over the past year, news of two new people cured of HIV grabbed headlines, stirring hopeful talk of what these scientific wonders might portend for the four-decade fight against the virus. To researchers working in the HIV cure arena, these cases are inspiring because they prove it is in fact possible to eradicate this extraordinarily complex virus from the body. That said, such cures are the result of treatments too toxic to attempt on all but a select few.

    October 5, 2022
    Cure
    NOVA PBS

  • At Long Last, Can Malaria Be Eradicated?

    All through childhood, Miriam Abdullah was shuttled in and out of hospitals, her thin body wracked with fever and ravaged by malaria. She was so sick so often that her constant treatments drained her parents, who also cared for her many siblings, both financially and emotionally. “At some point, even my mum gave up,” recalled Ms. Abdullah, now 35. In Nyalenda, the poor community in Kisumu, Kenya, where Ms. Abdullah lives, malaria is endemic and ubiquitous. Some of her friends developed meningitis after becoming infected; one died.

    October 4, 2022
    General
    The New York Times

  • For Patients Taking PrEP, Poor Adherence Drives HIV Seroconversions

    “PrEP is highly effective when taken as prescribed,” Nila Dharan, MD, PhD, FRACP, notes. “It is important to investigate cases of HIV acquisition once patients have been prescribed PrEP, to understand why this HIV prevention method has failed—whether there were structural or logistical barriers, poor adherence, or true ‘failure’ of the medication to prevent HIV, even when taken appropriately. Once the challenges are identified, they can be addressed, so that new HIV infections are prevented.”

    October 3, 2022
    PrEP
    Physician's Weekly

  • HIV Patients in South Africa Finds Hope in Arts

    An art project in the South African village of Hamburg, created by people affected by HIV, is now being exhibited in Johannesburg more than 15 years after it was completed. The Keiskamma art project gathered together over 130 women to weave a story of their pain and loss - but also of hope for the future after being affected by HIV/AIDS in the early 2000s when it hit South Africa.

    October 3, 2022
    General
    africanews

  • New Study Sheds More Light on Tenofovir and COVID-19

    A new large study has found that HIV-positive men taking the older formulation of tenofovir were less likely to acquire the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus and less likely to be hospitalized for COVID-19, according to results published in the October edition of AIDS.

    October 3, 2022
    General
    POZ Magazine

  • What the AIDS Crisis Can Teach Us About Monkeypox

    The monkeypox outbreak did not have to happen. At the end of May, when there were fewer than fifteen cases in the United States, queer activist James Krellenstein, molecular microbiologist Joseph Osmundson, and epidemiologist Keletso Makofane argued in the New York Times that it wasn’t too late to prevent an outbreak. The trio urged the government to quickly ease access to testing, deploy vaccines and antivirals held in the Strategic National Stockpile, and consult infectious disease and HIV experts to craft public health messages for queer men. This wasn’t wishful thinking.

    October 3, 2022
    General
    Boston Review

  • Sexual Health Groups Call for More Testing As NS HIV Cases Increase

    Sexual health organizations in Halifax are calling for more testing resources after Nova Scotia public health reported an increase in newly diagnosed HIV cases in the province. In a news release on Monday, public health said they normally see 15 to 20 new cases of HIV per year, but this year they've already recorded 20 to 25 new cases as of the end of August. They said they've observed most new cases to be coming from social circles in the Halifax Regional Municipality, but there are still cases showing up throughout the province.

    October 3, 2022
    General
    CBC

  • Is COVID-19 ‘Under Control’ in the US? Experts Say Yes

    President Joe Biden caused a stir in a “60 Minutes” interview on Sept. 18 when he declared that the COVID-19 pandemic is over. “We still have a problem with COVID — we’re still doing a lot of work on it,” Biden said. “But the pandemic is over.” Critics countered that the US is still averaging about 400 deaths daily from the virus, that nearly 30,000 Americans remain hospitalized, and that many others are suffering from “long COVID” symptoms stemming from previous infections.

    October 3, 2022
    General
    POZ Magazine

  • HIV Is No Longer a Death Sentence. But Under Louisiana Law, It Can Be a Prison Sentence.

    Robert Suttle thought enlisting in the Air Force after college in 2003 would give his life structure. Instead, the enlistment process gave the Shreveport resident a life-changing diagnosis: He was HIV positive at age 24. Suttle was in shock. He didn’t know anyone with HIV. Even as a young gay Black man in the South, he wasn’t aware he was at risk. No one talked about HIV where he was from.

    October 3, 2022
    General
    NOLA.com

  • Twenty Minutes HIV Self-Test Kit Likely To Be in India by December

    HIV diagnosis in India is set to take a big leap forward. A national study, unveiled last week, to gauge the acceptability and feasibility of self-testing kits to identify HIV got a massive thumbs up from the community. Experts believe it could transform testing for the virus and significantly increase the number of people who know their HIV status.

    October 2, 2022
    General
    The Times of India

  • Ohio Reports Third US Death of Person With Monkeypox Who Had Underlying Health Conditions

    Health authorities in Ohio reported the death of an adult male who had monkeypox, the third fatality in the United States of someone who tested positive for that virus since the outbreak began in May. The unidentified man had other health conditions, according to the state’s health department, which announced his death late Thursday. Michelle Fong, a spokesperson for the Ohio Department of Health, said on Monday that the patient’s health conditions decreased their immune response, “in line with what we’re seeing nationally in severe cases of monkeypox.”

    September 30, 2022
    General
    CNBC

  • Greece Approves Use of PrEP in Switch To Focus on HIV Prevention

    Greece took another step to implement a national strategy for LGBTQ rights by introducing free groundbreaking HIV prevention drugs. Lawmakers approved the official use of pre-exposure prophylactic drugs, commonly known as PrEP, in a vote late on Thursday, as Kyriakos Mitsotakis’s government begins to focus on the prevention of HIV infection rather than just on the treatment of the virus.

    September 30, 2022
    PrEP
    Bloomberg

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