Tenofovir alafenamide (TAF) could be used as once-weekly oral PrEP, an animal study conducted by the US Centers for Disease Control suggests.

Injectable HIV antiretroviral therapy (ART) is starting to be provided in England with several hundred patients now on the two-monthly injections. The British HIV Association’s Spring Conference in Birmingham last week heard some of the first data from the rollout in England. In general, the injections are effective and liked by patients, though there have been a few withdrawals.

“After I left the clinic, I got very emotional. Not because I had monkeypox…But I felt let down by the way the discourse, and the way that the infection, the virus or whatever it is, was being portrayed as well. It took me to a place where I just didn’t expect to feel in terms of my experience, as a gay man, with lots of privilege in lots of ways. Usually I felt like I had dignity in the [health] service and the way I am treated by the government and the likes of that. And it just kind of really sped away suddenly.”

Having a hidden infection with hepatitis B may undermine viral suppression after a switch to dolutegravir / lamivudine (Dovato), a study of people with HIV who simplified treatment in Italian and French clinics has concluded. The study investigators recommend careful monitoring of hepatitis B activity and HIV suppression in anyone with markers suggesting a hidden hepatitis B infection – antibodies to hepatitis B core antigen without corresponding antibodies to the hepatitis B surface antigen.

A cohort of people with HIV who took NRTIs (a class of HIV drugs) as part of HIV treatment showed lower rates of Alzheimer’s disease than people without HIV. The team of American researchers behind this study published in the journal of Pharmaceuticals suspect HIV-like sequences in our genome to be associated with the disease and thus these HIV drugs protect against its development.

Last month’s Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI 2024) included the latest information about potential drugs and treatments that might lead to a cure. Two presentations included promising data on TACK (targeted activation of cell kill). This is a property of some drugs in the non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase (NNRTI) family which induces a chain of events leading to the self-destruction of HIV-infected cells.

Women living with HIV in West Bengal (an eastern state of India) face intersectional stigma due to HIV as well as their other marginalised identities such as being a widow or a sex worker. This impacts not only their mental health, but also their physical health and leads to poorer HIV treatment outcomes, according to a qualitative study published in PLOS Global Health by Dr Reshmi Mukerji of University College London and colleagues.

Among migrants in Europe, the risk of contracting HIV or developing AIDS is exacerbated by the many social vulnerabilities they face in their daily lives. Furthermore, these vulnerabilities intersect and are embedded in sexism, cisgenderism and racism. This is illustrated by three case-studies from a Swiss sociological and qualitative study recently published in Culture, Health and Sexuality.

HIV clinicians have issued a note of caution regarding long-acting injectable cabotegravir and rilpivirine in a recent commentary in AIDS. Dr Diego Ripamonti of the Papa Giovanni XXIII hospital in Bergamo and colleagues from the universities of Milan and Siena highlight that people with long treatment histories in particular may not be good candidates for the treatment, due to the substantial risk of developing resistance to the drugs should the treatment fail.

Young people living with perinatally acquired HIV have a high prevalence of metabolic complications such as diabetes and raised cholesterol and require closer monitoring for long-term cardiovascular risk, a study of young adults in the United States has found. Although rates of perinatally acquired HIV have been falling for several decades around the world, approximately 2.5 million children and adolescents were estimated to be living with HIV in 2022, 90% in Africa and most with perinatally acquired HIV.

Two recent statements about taking the antibiotic doxycycline up to 72 hours after sex to prevent bacterial sexually transmitted infections, a prevention intervention known as doxyPEP, are notably more cautious about recommending its use than the first guidelines from California.

An online HIV prevention and relationship education programme developed by Dr Michael Newcomb and colleagues from Northwestern University is proving effective in reducing the risk of HIV in young male couples in the United States, a group disproportionately affected by HIV.

Switching from tenofovir alafenamide (TAF) to the older formulation of tenofovir disoproxil (TDF) resulted in modest weight loss in people with HIV in the Swiss HIV Cohort, researchers report in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases. Switching from TAF to TDF also brought benefits in the forms of reduced cholesterol and triglycerides. In contrast, switching from TAF-containing treatment to a two-drug combination of dolutegravir/lamivudine or injectable cabotegravir/rilpivirine did not lead to any changes in weight.

A Danish study which was able to chart the annual incidence of the three bacterial STIs, chlamydia, gonorrhoea and syphilis, in people attending sexual health clinics both before and after they started PrEP has found that they had more than twice as many (115% more) STI diagnoses while on PrEP than they had some time before starting it.

A study of cryptococcal meningitis incidence in people with HIV in Botswana shows that incidence has halved since 2015 and that the decline is correlated to increased antiretroviral coverage. But the study found that men were more likely to be diagnosed with cryptococcal meningitis than women and that illness related to advanced HIV remains a substantial problem despite achieving near-universal treatment coverage.

In a presentation at last month’s Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI 2024), the case was made that event-driven pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) might work just as well for women as men, and should be offered to them as an option.

Adolescent girls who are mothers and living with HIV, experience more interruptions in their antiretroviral (ART) treatment, have poorer adherence, poorer clinical attendance and lower viral suppression rates compared to those who are not mothers, a recent study published in the Journal of the International AIDS Society found.

The proportion of Black African women diagnosed with HIV increased between 2017 and 2021 in England, while the proportion of new diagnoses among White men dropped by 20%. Over this period, the proportion of PrEP users who were women, including Black African women, fell. Thus, when comparing Black African women to White men, and women to men, PrEP inequities have increased substantially, despite wider PrEP accessibility.

Results from a study published in PLOS Global Public Health show that people with HIV and common mental disorders in Zimbabwe can benefit from a low-cost and brief psychological intervention called the Friendship Bench to improve their mental health outcomes and, consequently, sustain viral suppression on antiretroviral therapy.

New mothers living with HIV are often unsure about whether or not to breastfeed their children, and for how long, the African Workshop on HIV & Women held in Nairobi, Kenya in February heard. This is because their infant feeding practices are influenced by the people around them, which makes the decision-making process even more difficult.