HIV & AIDS

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We Aren’t the Sex Police: What PrEP Providers Say About Condoms & STIs

  The potent protection from HIV afforded by Truvada as PrEP allows men to have sex with less worry and fear of HIV. But some worry that the inclusion of PrEP as a public health strategy will lead people to abandon condoms—which still have a role to play in further reducing risk of HIV and other STIs. In San Francisco—even before PrEP’s availability in 2012—rates of STIs among men who have sex with men have been steadily increasing and rates of condom use have gone down. BETA wanted to know—what do PrEP providers think? How do these practitioners, who see […]

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Should I Be on PrEP?

Let’s face it. Adulting is hard. But much more important than overcoming the Sunday Scaries and using Excel to keep track of just how bad you are at actually sticking to a budget is your health. There’s a good chance you’ve heard of PrEP, but how much do you really know about it? PrEP (pronounced “prep” and commercially known as Truvada) is an abbreviation for pre-exposure prophylaxis and it is an anti-viral treatment approved by the FDA in 2012 that your physician can prescribe to you in daily doses as a method of preventing new HIV infections. Many people, with […]

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HIV Replenishes Viral Reservoirs During Therapy

When HIV infects the body, it establishes a key foothold in lymphoid tissue and can persist there, despite potent therapy. But HIV is not dormant in this viral reservoir; the virus continues to replicate, move between tissue compartments and evolve – even when it is undetectable in the blood. HIV continues to replenish its viral reservoir in lymphoid tissue even when it can no longer be detected in the bloodstream. This was the conclusion of a new international study – led by Northwestern University in Chicago, IL, and published in Nature – that provides an important new perspective on how […]

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Most Sexually Active Teens Are Never Tested For HIV

  Only one-third of sexually active young adults and less than one-quarter of sexually active high schoolers have been tested for HIV, according to a new report. While HIV is rare and only about 10,000 teens and young adults are diagnosed with the disease each year, testing is still essential. A full 44 percent of adolescents living with HIV are undiagnosed — the highest percentage of any age group. “Teens are in a particularly important period of their lives for HIV testing and prevention,” Michelle Van Handel, a health scientist at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and lead […]

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“PrEP: The Revolution That Didn’t Happen” Declares New AHF Ad

A new advocacy ad by the AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF) takes aim at the failure of pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), the use of Gilead Sciences’ AIDS treatment Truvada to prevent HIV transmission in uninfected individuals, to catch on despite the fact that the powerful AIDS treatment medication has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for us as PrEP since July 2012 and that Gilead has spent millions to promote the drug directly to community groups and physicians. In 2014, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) initially recommended that 500,000 gay men and other high risk individuals […]

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What to Do If Your Provider Says “No” to PrEP

  PrEP stands for Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis. It is a once-daily pill regimen that can help you stay HIV-negative. When taken as prescribed by a knowledgeable healthcare provider, PrEP has been shown to be more than 90 percent effective against contracting HIV. But one in three healthcare providers has not even heard about PrEP, which means you could encounter some resistance if your clinician doesn’t have all of the facts. Here are some common misconceptions you might hear from a PrEP-skeptical provider and ways to address them using information from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)’s 2014 Clinical Practice […]

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NIH to Fund First Large-scale Trial for Heart Disease Prevention Among People With HIV

  Studies have shown that individuals with HIV are 50–100 percent more likely to develop cardiovascular disease (including heart attack and stroke) than individuals without HIV; however, more research is needed to determine if use of statins is the answer.  The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is now funding the largest cardiac prevention trial in HIV, called REPRIEVE, a Randomized Trial to Prevent Vascular Events in HIV. This landmark study is the first large-scale randomized clinical trial to test a strategy for heart disease prevention among people living with HIV.  The REPRIEVE Clinical Trial is evaluating whether a daily dose […]

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New Single-tablet HIV Treatment Wins FDA Approval

The US Food and Drug Administration have approved a new single tablet as a complete treatment for the treatment of HIV-1 infection in people aged 12 years and over. The new single-tablet HIV drug contains a new form of the powerful HIV inhibitor tenofovir. The new treatment, called Genvoya, from Gilead Sciences, is a fixed-dose combination of elvitegravir, cobicistat, emtricitabine and tenofovir alafenamide. It is intended for patients aged 12 and over, weighing at least 35 kg (77 lbs) and who have never been treated for HIV before, or for infected adults whose HIV is currently suppressed. The drug was […]

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The Elton John AIDS Foundation Awards $4.4 Million in New Grants

The Elton John AIDS Foundation (EJAF), a leader in the global effort to end AIDS, announced Wednesday a new series of grants totaling $4.4 million to support organizations fighting the HIV/AIDS epidemic in critical and innovative ways. The Foundation is renewing 16 grants and funding nine new organizations to scale up programs that address societal trends driving the HIV/AIDS epidemic. This is one of EJAF’s largest grant cycles to date. “For more than 20 years, the Elton John AIDS Foundation has been committed to confronting the HIV/AIDS epidemic where it exists,” said EJAF Founder Elton John. “Our newest round of […]

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Turing’s Price Hike A Symptom of Bigger Problem

  Hating on Martin Shkreli nearly broke the Internet after he raised the price of a generic but life-saving drug from $13.50 to $750. While it would be easy to pile on, at Gay Men’s Health Crisis we believe this is an opportunity to shine a light on the bigger problem. As one biotech analyst noted, Shkreli’s company, Turing Pharmaceuticals, bases its entire business plan precisely on the price-spike strategy, which is neither new nor illegal – but it is getting worse. Building on a long history of prescription drug policy activism, GMHC has spoken out about the next generation […]

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