HIV

Anna Marzec-Bogusławska, MD, MPH, managing director, National AIDS Center, Warsaw, Poland, discusses how stigma and discrimination permeated the beginning of the HIV/AIDS epidemic the country in the early 1980s and ways that advocates stepped up to overcome peoples’ fears.

New research shows that cortisol and cortisone levels in the hair of people living with HIV were negatively associated with CD4 count, but not with HIV viral load.

Nicoleta Dascalu, founding member and advocacy manager of Asociaţia Română Anti-SIDA (ARAS; Romanian Association Against AIDS), discusses the status of care for persons living with HIV/AIDS (PLWH) in Romania, including health care coverage and lack of adequate medication access.

Jason Myers, PhD, CEO of the New Zealand AIDS Foundation, addresses how New Zealand promptly adjusted its delivery of services for people living with HIV and AIDS in New Zealand, with examples including HIV self-test kits, online counseling, and provision of mental health care assistance.

According to a review, few individuals initiating tenofovir disoproxil fumarate (TDF)–based HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) experienced clinically significant kidney impairment, although the risk was increased.

Researchers found point-of-care viral load (POC VL) tests have high sensitivity and specificity for detection of viral loads of at least 1000 copies/mL.

Research shows that only 1.05% of US emergency department (ED) visits included HIV testing in 2018 and that HIV testing rates varied by race, age group, and region.

Editor’s Note: After this issue of Evidence-Based Oncology™ went to press, Bristol Myers Squibb Foundation announced the $100 million, 5-year initiative will now be called the Robert A. Winn Diversity in Clinical Trials Award Program. The program will also receive a $14 million donation from Gilead Sciences, Inc., over the next 4 years.

Using data from the National HIV Surveillance System, the National Center for Health Statistics, and the US Census, a team from the CDC investigated lifetime HIV risk in the United States.

A large systematic review on pregnant women living with HIV found that protease inhibitor–based antiretroviral therapy (ART) use was associated with increased risk of babies being born small or very small for their gestational age, but not with other adverse pregnancy outcomes.

With more people living with HIV now reaching advanced ages and qualifying for Medicare coverage, this new study investigated HIV-related influences on their health care spending, particularly antiretroviral therapy (ART), compared with a population who does not have HIV.

Attending comprehensive sexuality education (CSE) was associated with increased access to HIV testing among adolescent girls, regardless of whether they were actively in school.

Traditional cardiovascular (CV) risk prediction models may not apply accurately to patients with HIV who may develop the cardiovascular disease younger than usual, said Jorge Plutzky, MD, director of the Vascular Disease Prevention Program and director of Preventive Cardiology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School.

Adults living with HIV receiving integrase strand transfer inhibitor (INSTI)–based antiretroviral therapy (ART) had a 76% higher incidence of hypertension compared with adults receiving non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors (NNRTIs).

There is evidence that people with HIV may have increased risk of cardiovascular disease and researchers are still trying to understand why, said Jorge Plutzky, MD, director of the Vascular Disease Prevention Program and director of Preventive Cardiology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School.

Low functional status based on Duke Activity Status Instrument score was associated with higher cardiometabolic risk among individuals 45 years and older living with HIV, this new multinational cohort study found.

This new meta-analysis from World Health Organization and University of Cape Town investigators analyzed adverse posthospitalization discharge outcomes and related risk factors among persons living with HIV.

This new study evaluated the influence of transmission bottlenecks on HIV-1 infection virulence by comparing outcomes between penile-vaginal intercourse and anal intercourse, and found more severe disease among heterosexual individuals compared with men who have sex with men.

An analysis of 2019 claims data for California Medicaid enrollees shows large disparities in HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) uptake, especially among Black individuals.

A new report from the CDC details how services for HIV, sexual health, and viral hepatitis were affected in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to data from 2019 and 2020.

Although thousands of new substance use disorder treatment facilities that offer medication for opioid use disorder were opened between 2017 and 2020, the proportion of facilities that also offered HIV and hepatitis C virus (HCV) testing hardly changed.

An abstract presented at this year’s Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI) bore out the results of an Italian investigation into a potential link between persons living with HIV (PLWH) taking newer antiretroviral therapies and neurocognitive disorder prevalence.

A data analysis found a 22% reduction in HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) prescriptions and a 25% reduction in new PrEP users in the United States after COVID-19 was declared a national emergency.

The CDC Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report also covered varying COVID-19 vaccination coverage among people living with HIV (PLWH) in New York.

A woman is now the third person in the world to be cured of HIV; CDC data suggest vaccinating women against COVID-19 during pregnancy may protect infants after birth; provider groups push to keep Direct Contracting payment model.

A new study from North Carolina has investigated individuals’ experiences with and perspectives on their receipt of HIV-related care while incarcerated in 1 of 21 jails in the state.

New data from the CDC’s latest Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report highlight disparities of HIV diagnoses among Black adults in the United States.

This retrospective study evaluated real-world implementation of the updated CDC HIV algorithm in a large US laboratory.

Researchers have discovered a highly virulent HIV-1 variant in the Netherlands that causes immune system strength to decline twice as fast vs other HIV strains.

As a social determinant of health, transportation barriers and their impact on health-related quality of life (HRQOL) were investigated among persons living with HIV in the Deep South.