Expanding the range of options to prevent HIV is key
By Shobha Shukla || Citizen News Service CNS LISTEN
FEB 3, 2021
While the currently available HIV prevention and treatment tools have helped reduce new HIV infections and AIDS-related deaths by 23% and 39% respectively since 2010, we still have a long way to go before ending this epidemic. With 1.7 million new HIV infections and 690,000 AIDS-related deaths in 2019, one cannot but overemphasize the urgent need to have more HIV prevention options, including long-acting HIV prevention strategies that might prove to be more acceptable and user friendly to people from diverse communities.
Topping the list is the much-awaited long-acting dapivirine vaginal ring that has finally seen the light of the day and is under regulatory approval processes of several countries. This long-acting female-oriented HIV prevention option is designed to be used by women discreetly. It is a silicon ring impregnated with dapivirine which a woman c
Having Wide Range of Options to Prevent HIV is Vital by Angela Mohan on February 3, 2021 at 3:32 PM
Various promising preventive options for HIV are available, which might prove to be more acceptable and user friendly to people from diverse communities.
Long-acting dapivirine vaginal ring that has finally seen the light of the day and is under regulatory approval processes of several countries. This long-acting female-oriented HIV prevention option is designed to be used by women discreetly. This silicon ring protects from acquiring HIV for 28 days at a time. The ring has to be replaced once every month.
Other promising products include long-acting injectable pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) for women and Islatravir as a once-monthly PrEP pill, as well as a promising new method to induce broadly neutralising antibodies (bNAbs) that could help speed HIV vaccine development.
Shobha Shukla - CNS
While the currently available HIV prevention and treatment tools have helped reduce new HIV infections and AIDS-related deaths by 23% and 39% respectively since 2010, we still have a long way to go before ending this epidemic. With 1.7 million new HIV infections and 690,000 AIDS-related deaths in 2019, one cannot but over emphasise the urgent need to have more HIV prevention options, including long-acting HIV prevention strategies that might prove to be more acceptable and user friendly to people from diverse communities.
Topping the list is the much-awaited long-acting dapivirine vaginal ring that has finally seen the light of the day and is under regulatory approval processes of several countries. This long acting female oriented HIV prevention option is designed to be used by women discreetly. It is a silicon ring impregnated with dapivirine which a woman can insert in her vagina and be protected from acquiring HIV for 28 days at a time. The ring has to b
Wednesday, 27 January 2021, 7:53 am
26 January 2021 – Important advances in HIV prevention
research were announced today at the 4th
HIV Research for Prevention Conference (HIVR4P //
Virtual), convened by IAS – the International AIDS
Society.
Highlights included findings from a pair of
trials evaluating whether infusions with a broadly
neutralizing antibody (bNAb) can prevent HIV acquisition and
positive interim results from a study of long-acting
injectable pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) in women. Other
announcements included promising data from a study of
islatravir as a once-monthly PrEP pill, a study warning that
many African countries are not on track to meet key UNAIDS
prevention targets, new data on global uptake of PrEP, and a
Courtesy of Terri and Tom Bone
Terri and Tom Bone, donors to the Magee-Womens Research Institute for prematurity research.
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Terri Bone remembered calling the neonatal intensive care unit from her hospital room to check on her newborn daughter.
“The nurse told me, ‘she stopped breathing last night, but she is OK,’ ” said Bone. “ ‘Premature babies do that sometimes.’ ”
After 10 days in the NICU at what is now UPMC Magee-Womens Hospital, baby Megan went home.
Now, 29, Megan is a pediatric neurologist in Texas. As a University of Pittsburgh medical student, she spent time in 2017 in that very same NICU where she was born five weeks early at 6 pounds.