Over the next 20 years, cases of drug-resistant tuberculosis (TB) are set to rise in India, the Philippines, Russia, and South Africa – the four countries which already bear the highest burden. A new study published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases says the rise is likely ...

Antiretroviral therapy (ART) has increased life expectancy by a decade in young Europeans and North Americans treated for HIV. Substantial declines in mortality emerged especially for those starting treatment between 2008 and 2010, pointing to the positive effect of evolving therapies and earlier detection. Reporting in ...

The World Health Organization (WHO) updated the fourth edition of the Guidelines for treatment of tuberculosis published in 2010. The Global TB Programme of the World Health Organization convened a meeting of a Guidelines Development Group on 11-13 July 2016 in Geneva, Switzerland in order to ...

Abstract Background In 2014, the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) issued treatment goals for human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). The 90-90-90 target specifies that by 2020, 90% of individuals living with HIV will know their HIV status, 90% of people with diagnosed HIV infection will receive ...

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 ...

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 ...

More than a third of HIV patients develop oral conditions from immune systems compromised by the virus and its treatment, according to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) While advances in HIV treatment have dramatically improved patient lifespans and quality of life, nagging side effects remain; ...

The FDA approved AZT in a record 20 months, a move that remains controversial today. HIV was first reported in 1981, but it wasn’t until six years later—in March 1987—that a drug to fight the virus was approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). On ...

High drug pricing for interferon-free direct acting antiviral regimens (up to US$93 000 per 12 week course) has limited broad implementation in the vast majority of settings, with restrictions based on liver disease stage generally introduced to reduce budget impact. Other restrictions, including those based on ...

Patent opposition aims to increase affordable access to hepatitis C drug sofosbuvir for millions Rome/Geneva, 27 March 2017 – The international medical humanitarian organisation Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has today filed a patent challenge on the hepatitis C drug sofosbuvir with the European Patent Office (EPO) ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

Tuberculosis, the world’s leading infectious killer, may have finally met its match. Two new drug therapies may be able to cure all forms of tuberculosis – even the ones most difficult to treat. “We will have something to offer every single patient,” says Mel Spigelman, president ...

SEATTLE — Data from a study of HIV–infected infants who received early ART suggest the reservoir for HIV lies in cells that were infected before ART initiation. “This is important because we have to understand what the reservoir is to be able to target it and ...

Bioquark Inc. and SC21 Biotech are collaborating on novel cellular therapies for long term HIV control by cost effectively and industrially scaling the production of HIV resistant cells for allogeneic transplant needs. Phialdelphia, PA, February 11, 2017 – Bioquark, Inc., (http://www.bioquark.com) a life sciences company focused ...

Last June, a Perspective piece in the New England Journal of Medicine noted the critical place that the World Health Organization’s list of Essential Medicines had assumed in global health policy and responses — donors, governments and insurers were all more likely to invest in ...