On 31 March 2017, WHO for the first time prequalified a generic active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) for hepatitis C – sofosbuvir. Sofosbuvir is an essential ingredient for new, highly effective medicines to treat hepatitis C called direct active antivirals (DAAs). The prequalified product’s manufacturer is ...

A new report from Public Citizen, the US-based consumer rights advocacy group, shows that the 20 largest pharmaceutical corporations are spending significantly less on research and development of new medicines than they are making in profits. The report shows that, on average for these top companies, ...

To mark World TB Day, 24 March 2017, the International Journal of Infectious Diseases published a special issue on TB. It highlights the Advances, Challenges and Opportunities in the ‘End TB’ Era through publishing 42 articles by a distinguished global authorship. The series of articles review progress ...

An international group of researchers involved in the ANRS 12174 randomised controlled trial of pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) for infants say that it is high time we started giving PrEP to all breastfed babies of HIV-positive mothers in countries where the likelihood of transmission via breastfeeding ...

The Lancet HIV is an exclusively online journal dedicated to publishing original research that advocates change in, or illuminates, HIV clinical practice. It publishes translational, epidemiological, clinical, operational, and implementation studies. The April 2017 issue is available here. Source

Implant could offer long-acting, removable form of prevention not currently available Chapel Hill, NC – Researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have received a three-year, $1.8 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to develop a new implantable drug delivery system ...

Testing all patients is vital if the proportion of HIV co-infections is to fall in the European Union and European Economic Area, the World Health Organization has announced ahead of World TB Day 2017. The proportion of people in Europe living with tuberculosis (TB) and HIV ...

After three years, tenofovir alafenamide (TAF) for first-line HIV treatment was better at suppressing viral load and safer for the bones and kidneys than the older tenofovir disoproxil fumarate (TDF), researchers reported at the 2017 Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI 2017) last month in ...

Patients receiving long-term tenofovir therapy for hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection have an increased risk for abnormalities in bone metabolism, such as low serum phosphate, according to a study published in the Annals of Hepatology.1 Tenofovir, a first-line antiviral agent for HBV, is generally well-tolerated, although ...

Researchers have been successful in increasing HIV treatment success rates by almost 18 percent. Teams from the Universities of Aberdeen, Maastricht and the University and Academic Medical Centre in Amsterdam, developed a new programme designed to better assist patients treated for HIV in taking their ...

The Stop TB Partnership delivered the letter to WHO requesting inclusion of Mycobacterium tuberculosis in the WHO’s Global priority list of antibiotic-resistant bacteria to guide research, discovery and development of new antibiotics. STOP TB PARTNERSHIP ANNOUNCEMENT Geneva, Switzerland – 6 March 2017 — We would like to ...

University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Nursing Professor David Vance, Ph.D., has received a two-year, $404,250 R21 grant from the National Institute of Nursing Research for his project “Individualized-Targeted Training in Older Adults with HAND” to develop cognitive training interventions to improve everyday functioning ...

Eight infants who began antiretroviral therapy (ART) during the first year of life and maintained viral suppression for 7 years had no evidence of ongoing HIV replication or consequent viral evolution . The findings are important because low viral diversity in just-infected infants provides a ...

More research is needed into how the virus may affect cerebral small vessel disease, a leading cause of cognitive decline. Even when people with HIV are doing well on antiretroviral (ARV) treatment, they are apparently more likely to have certain abnormalities in blood vessels in the ...

SEATTLE — Assessing multiple viral load (VL) values across time may better inform treatment response and potential for HIV transmission, according to researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). They presented new data at the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI ...

Monash University and Cardiff University (UK) researchers have come a step further in understanding how the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) evades the immune system. Declared a pandemic in 1987 by the World Health Organization, HIV infection has been responsible for 39 million deaths over the last ...

SEATTLE — Integration of ART into maternal and child health services during the postnatal period leads to significant improvements in women’s participation in HIV care and resulting viral suppression, according to findings presented at the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI). “To understand the context ...

Research on the continuum of HIV care must be improved and benchmarked against an integrated, comprehensive framework in order to make strides against the HIV epidemic, according to researchers at the Rollins School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins University, and the Centers for Disease Control ...