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8 MAY 2015 VOLUME 16 ISSUE 19

Media Coverage

  • Bill and Melinda Gates move to bolster global health basics

    At the close of their three-day Global Partners Forum in Seattle, Bill and Melinda Gates looked back on the past 15 years as they rapidly grew to become a world epicenter for the fight against diseases of poverty, on what they have learned and where they see things headed – in the field of global health and development in general.

    May 8, 2015
    Humanosphere

  • Researchers report new primary care model to address trauma

    UCSF clinical researchers and Positive Women's Network-USA have developed and are reporting a new primary care model. "In our clinic where we treat women with HIV, we are able to deliver lifesaving anti-HIV medications, but...over the last ten years, only 16 percent of our patient deaths were due to HIV/AIDS. Most deaths were due to...adult and childhood experiences of trauma....said the paper's lead author, Edward L. Machtinger, MD, director of the Women's HIV Program at UCSF.

    May 7, 2015
    Medical Net

  • Who is providing HIV and AIDS services in communities?

    The National Emergency Response Council on HIV and AIDS (NERCHA) through its monitoring and evaluation unit is currently engaged in mapping HIV implementers in the country to determine their exact geographical location through the use of Global Positioning System (GPS) gadgets....Through this initiative, NERCHA will be able to update its database for organisations implementing HIV and AIDS programmes in Swaziland and link that to the national monitoring and evaluation database for quarterly updates.

    May 7, 2015
    Swazi Observer

  • Company creates bioethics panel on trial drugs

    Johnson & Johnson has appointed a nationally known bioethicist to create a panel that will make decisions about patients’ requests for potentially lifesaving medicine, responding to an emotional debate over whether companies should allow desperately ill people to have access to the drugs before they are approved....Drug companies have been granting emergency access to their unapproved drugs since the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s....But saying yes is not so simple.

    May 7, 2015
    New York Times

  • ViiV Healthcare commences dolutegravir, rilpivirine Phase 3 in HIV

    ViiV Healthcare announced start of Phase 3 clinical trials to evaluate dolutegravir and rilpivirine as maintenance therapy for adult patients with HIV. Dolutegravir and rilpivirine will be provided as individual tablets; development of the single-tablet formulation will be concurrent with the trials. Each study will enrol approximately 500 patients across 13 countries, [including] meaningful numbers of patients from groups underrepresented in HIV clinical studies, such as women and people over 50 years of age.

    May 6, 2015
    Street Insider

  • Key Correspondent receives Malawi media award

    Key Correspondent Owen Nyaka has been awarded ‘Best Paediatric and HIV Journalist of the Year’ by the Malawi Chapter of the Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA). Nyaka, the only freelance online reporter among the winners, said: “I will always cherish the fact that I am the first winner under this newly created category of the MISA awards, introduced to uplift the quality and standards of reporting on paediatric and adolescent HIV.”

    May 6, 2015
    Key Correspondents

  • Yes, Black gay lives matter says Greg Millett of amfAR

    While "Black lives matter" has become a rallying cry across the United States in recent months, Gregorio Millett, vice president and director of public policy at the Foundation for AIDS Research (amfAR), is asking a different question. He wants to know whether Black gay lives matter, particularly when it comes to fighting HIV.

    May 6, 2015
    The Body

  • HRC and AIDS United release new guide on HIV prevention and care

    Today, just after Grammy Award-winning music legend Elton John urged Congress to bolster its fight against AIDS, the Human Rights Campaign Foundation, in collaboration with AIDS United, released a guide on HIV prevention and care, as well as a unique online Q&A feature. This new resource is supported in part by a grant from the Elton John AIDS Foundation. The guide, “A Handbook To Understanding Health and HIV,” lays out facts and debunks myths about HIV and AIDS.

    May 6, 2015
    LGBT Weekly

  • Hepatitis C common among HIV-positive patients in sub-Saharan Africa

    A new study [published in Lancet Infectious Diseases] has found high levels of infection with hepatitis C across Africa, particularly in people infected with HIV....Researchers from Imperial College London and Doctors Without Borders collated data on over 1.1 million individuals from 213 studies....The findings will inform the global debate about how treatment should be made available to all those who need it.

    May 6, 2015
    Science Daily

  • BHIVA 2015: People who don't reveal HIV status have as good health outcomes as those who do

    A large survey of people attending HIV clinics in the UK has found that individuals who chose not to disclose their HIV status to other people were no more likely to suffer from depression or anxiety, to have difficulty adhering to antiretroviral therapy (AR), or to have worse HIV outcomes, according to research presented at the British HIV Association (BHIVA) annual meeting last month in Brighton.

    May 6, 2015
    HIV and Hepatitis

  • Study suggests Truvada PrEP should start 1 week before and continue 4 weeks after sex

    An intensive pharmacokinetic study of Truvada for pre-exposure prophylaxis showed that blood and rectal drugs levels corresponding to high PrEP activity for men who have sex with men are reached after about 1 week of daily dosing and appear to remain adequate for several days after the last pill, according to a report in Clinical Infectious Diseases. It is not known, however, whether this dosing schedule would work as well for women or other groups.

    May 6, 2015
    PrEP
    HIV & Hepatitis

  • Embattled GSK scraps ViiV spinoff as pharma revenues tumble

    About that ViiV Healthcare spinoff GlaxoSmithKline's been looking at--it's not happening....The company has decided to hang onto the HIV drug business....Recent launches Tivicay and Triumeq have continued to surpass expectations and there's "clear scope" to develop multiple Tivicay-based treatment regimens.... All things considered, "retaining its full, existing holding" in ViiV "is in the best interests of the group," the company said. In other words, GSK's suffering pharma unit needs the HIV revenue.

    May 6, 2015
    Fierce Pharma

  • Study reveals how a Rab protein controls HIV-1 replication

    HIV-1 replication requires the coordinated movement of the virus's components toward the plasma membrane of an immune cell, where the virions are assembled and ultimately released. A study in the Journal of Cell Biology reveals how a Rab protein that controls intracellular trafficking supports HIV-1 assembly by promoting high levels of an important membrane lipid....University of Buenos Aires researcher Matías Ostrowski...believes these results open a path to investigate whether manipulating endosomal traffic could be a new target for anti-HIV-1 therapies.

    May 6, 2015
    Fierce Biotech Research

  • Rural Indiana struggles to contend with HIV outbreak

    She became addicted to painkillers over a decade ago, when a car wreck left her with a broken back and doctors prescribed OxyContin during her recovery....Last month, the thin, 45-year-old woman learned the unforgiving consequences. She tested positive for HIV, one of nearly 150 cases in this socially conservative, largely rural region just north of the Kentucky border. Now a life long hobbled by addiction is, like so many others here, consumed by fear.

    May 5, 2015
    PrEP
    New York Times

  • Research: Africa's fight for equality

    To try to give African scientists more independence, several global funders are testing ways to build research leadership in Africa, and are transferring some ownership of their own projects there to local scientists....But there is still a long way to go, says Glenda Gray, president of the South African Medical Research Council. No matter how hard African scientists struggle for control of the research agenda, she says, they will not fully succeed until their own governments start to pay their share.

    May 5, 2015
    Nature

  • CDC consolidates global TB activities in new global health branch

    In an effort to increase coordination and collaboration on tuberculosis activities at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and maximize the CDC’s impact on global TB efforts, the agency is consolidating TB and HIV activities under a revamped program in the CDC’s Center for Global Health, changing the Division of Global HIV/AIDS to the Division of Global HIV and TB.

    May 5, 2015
    Science Speaks

  • Graham, Leahy host Elton John to promote fight against HIV/AIDS

    Senators Lindsey Graham and Patrick Leahy hosted Sir Elton John at the Capitol as part of a push to ensure funding for the bipartisan effort to combat AIDS. The South Carolina Republican and Vermont Democrat, chairman and ranking member on the Appropriations foreign affairs subcommittee, praised the musician’s efforts, along with those of U2’s Bono and others involved with the ONE Campaign....“Our work is not done yet,” Elton John said.

    May 5, 2015
    Roll Call

  • This entire magazine is printed using HIV-positive blood

    To make a big point, a small Austrian men's magazine printed an entire edition using ink laced with HIV-positive blood. The idea, said Julian Wiehl, co-publisher of The Vangardist — a "progressive" magazine aimed at young, urban men — was to make a statement about the stigma still associated with the virus that no one could ignore.

    May 5, 2015
    Washington Post

  • Are scare tactics off the table for public health campaigns targeting HIV?

    Over the last 10 years, public health campaigns in New York City around smoking, obesity, and HIV underwent a dramatic shift to use fear and disgust to spur behavior change, sometimes with the unintended consequence of stigmatizing affected populations. In a new article, scholars explore the implications of this shift to fear-based campaigns in the present public health environment.

    May 4, 2015
    Science Daily

  • How chickenpox virus can cause a stroke in an HIV patient

    Varicella-zoster virus causes chickenpox in children and shingles in older adults. The virus typically remains dormant in patients with healthy immune systems, but can reactivate if the immune system is compromised. Patients infected with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) can, in rare cases, experience bleeding on the brain that causes a type of stroke called intracerebral hemorrhage.

    May 4, 2015
    Science Daily

  • Researchers 'un-can' the HIV virus

    If the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is a bit like a hermetically sealed tin can no one has yet been able to break open, the good news is that researchers at the CHUM Research Centre, affiliated with the University of Montreal, have identified a way to use a "can opener" to force the virus to open up and to expose its vulnerable parts, allowing the immune system cells to then kill the infected cells.

    May 4, 2015
    Science Daily

  • If we take this one step, Bill Gates says we could save 21 million people from AIDS by 2030

    Saving millions of lives from AIDS is most certainly in our reach, according to Bill Gates -- we just have to up the resources aimed at ending the virus. In a blog post published on Wednesday, the philanthropist wrote about recent findings by the Lancet Commissions that found 21 million lives could be saved by 2030 "if the world accelerates the fight against HIV/AIDS." Gates -- who pointed out that the figure roughly represents the population of Australia -- highlighted the immensity of such a prospective accomplishment.

    May 1, 2015
    Huffington Post

  • In the wake of new cures bill, NIH celebrates while FDA mulls responsibilities

    In a US House of Representatives hearing..., much buzz centered around a proposal [that] recommends $10 billion in extra funding for NIH over 5 years....Kathy Hudson, NIH’s deputy director for science, welcomed bill language directing NIH to develop an overarching strategic plan—a suggestion research advocates had criticized....Indeed, NIH is already working on such a plan [that] NIH Director Francis Collins said “will set the stage for the future of biomedical research."

    April 30, 2015
    Science

  • Many undiagnosed HIV infections picked up when testing people who have other medical conditions, but implementation challenges remain

    A Europe-wide project offering HIV tests to hospital patients with glandular fever symptoms, swollen lymph nodes, a low white blood cell or platelet count, or pneumonia has found that over 3% of tested patients had previously undiagnosed HIV....The results show the importance of getting non-HIV specialist clinicians to consider HIV testing in patients with a wide range of illnesses....However this remains challenging.

    April 30, 2015
    aidsmap

  • HIV-1: Optimizing treatment protocols when diagnostics are costly

    A study this week in PLOS Computational Biology challenges current [HIV-1] treatment paradigms in the context of 'treatment for prevention' against HIV-1. The authors provide a mathematical platform that can be used to compute optimal diagnostic-guided vs. pro-active treatment strategies under consideration of available resources. They apply this framework to a stochastic model of viral intra-host dynamics and drug resistance development. When applied to resource-constrained settings, they show that pro-active strategies may be worthwhile.

    April 30, 2015
    Science Daily

  • PEPFAR: Young women bear HIV burden

    The head of PEPFAR, [Dr. Deborah Birx], says young women and girls are disproportionally affected by HIV....“[Their]...incidence and prevalence of disease is much higher than their age-matched boy counterpart. And it starts very early, probably at about 14 to 15, and escalates through the early 20s with a rate about twice in young men,” Birx said. "We’ve defined that they’re at a unique risk, but haven’t defined the type of programming that will affect that risk.”

    April 30, 2015
    Voice of America

  • US-South Africa programme funds new TB, HIV research

    A five-year collaborative research programme to promote HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis research in South Africa has announced new first-year grants worth US$8 million. The US-South Africa Program for Collaborative Biomedical Research, which is worth US$40 million, with the South African Medical Research Council and US National Institutes of Health each funding half the amount,...will support 31 joint research initiatives [by] South African scientists working with US counterparts.

    April 28, 2015
    SciDev Net

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