HIV & AIDS

Historically, HIV treatments have included three or more medications (oftentimes combined in one pill) to keep HIV suppressed and help people living with HIV reach and maintain undetectable viral loads. In the spring of 2019, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the complete regimen combo pill Dovato (dolutegravir + lamivudine), manufactured by ViiV Healthcare, giving clinicians for the first time a two-drug option to treat individuals just beginning HIV treatment. Now, recently updated U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (DHHS) HIV treatment recommendations list a two-drug regimen (dolutegravir + lamivudine) as a first-line recommended therapy. But, Monica Gandhi, MD, MPH, from Zuckerberg San Francisco […]

“Linkage to care” is a well-spoken mantra in the field of HIV: Make sure that people who are living with HIV are seeing an HIV care provider and have access to HIV medications. As simple as it may seem, the changing nature of San Francisco’s HIV epidemic means that more and more people are not accessing—or are not able to access—HIV prevention or care from traditional medical clinics. HIV providers and frontline staff must confront the challenge of bringing HIV care to people—beyond simply linking people to care.   “Access to HIV care is so much more than making sure a person has […]

A new cure strategy designed to harness the power of the immune system to achieve HIV remission in people living with HIV will begin at the University of California, San Francisco in 2020. The study was described and announced at the amfAR 2019 HIV Cure Summit held on November 21, 2019. “This is kind of an unprecedented human clinical trial, putting together a lot of things that we think will optimally stimulate the immune system,” said Rachel Rutishauser, MD, PhD, from UCSF and Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital. “The main clinical outcome will be to understand the proportion of people who […]