HIV/AIDS News

SEATTLE — Results from the PROMISE trial presented at CROI 2015 support the current WHO recommendations for prevention of mother-to-child transmission with the use of triple antiretroviral regimens during pregnancy.

Many insurers offering health plans under the Affordable Care Act appear to have structured their drug formularies to dissuade high-cost patients — including those with HIV— from enrolling in their plans, according to a recent perspective in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Compared with other ethnic groups, black men and women are disproportionately affected by HIV infection. According to the CDC, black patients account for 44% of new HIV infections and 48% of deaths among those diagnosed with the virus, despite comprising roughly 12% of the U.S. population.

In 2012, mortality rates among black patients with HIV were 1.5 times that of white patients with HIV and more than three times that of Hispanic and Latinos living with HIV.

HIV-infected children were significantly more likely to die from pneumonia in developing countries where the highest incidence and mortality from pneumonia have been reported, according to recent findings.

Structural changes to community coalitions whose goal was to decrease HIV infection rates among children in at-risk communities did not significantly reduce risk behaviors, according to study findings in JAMA Pediatrics.

The FDA recently recommended that men who have sex with men be allowed to donate blood, provided that their last sexual contact was at least 1 year ago.

Data from the Global Burden of Disease Study 2013 suggest that global life expectancy has increased by 5.8 years among men and 6.6 years among women from 1990 to 2013.

New data suggest that the prevalence of cryptococcal meningitis among individuals with AIDS in the United States is high and routine screening for cryptococcal antigen in these patients would be cost effective.

The FDA has granted Alere a Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments waiver for its point-of-care rapid diagnostic test for HIV infection, according to a press release.