Doxycycline After Unprotected Sex Significantly Reduced STIs
San Francisco, Seattle Study of Men Who Have Sex with Men and Transgender Women Stopped Early for Effectiveness
Global health researchers at the University of Washington have received a $122 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to test the effectiveness of the candidate drug islatravir, a once-a-month oral pill to prevent HIV.
The five-year grant will support the implementation of a Phase 3, randomized trial of islatravir, among women, in seven countries in sub-Saharan Africa. Islatravir is a nucleoside reverse transcriptase translocation inhibitor in development by Merck for the treatment and prevention of HIV-1 infection.
Two Department of Global Health faculty have been selected to lead the University of Washington/Fred Hutch Center for AIDS Research (CFAR). Professor Connie Celum and associate professor Ruanne Barnabas have been announced as the next Director and Co-Director, respectively.
Both appointments are active as of April 1, 2021.
A monthly vaginal ring is one significant step closer to potentially becoming a new HIV prevention method for cisgender women in sub-Saharan Africa, who face persistently high rates of HIV infection but have few options to protect themselves.
Point-of-care HIV viral load testing combined with task shifting can improve viral suppression and retention in care by up to 14% and enable rapid care decisions, suggest results of a clinical trial led by the University of Washington and the Centre for the AIDS Programme of Research in South Africa (CAPRISA).
Globally, 25 percent of new HIV cases occur among young women and adolescent girls in Africa. Pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP, prevents infection when taken consistently, but stigma around the disease keeps some young women from maintaining usage, according to a new review by researchers at the University of Washington.
By Bruce Jancin
DURBAN, SOUTH AFRICA – Oral antiretroviral pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) against HIV also reduces the risk of acquiring herpes simplex virus type 2, according to research presented at the 21st International AIDS Conference.
“Given the limited interventions for primary prevention of HSV-2, efficacy against HSV-2 provides additional benefit to oral PrEP,” observed Connie Celum, MD, professor of global health and medicine at the University of Washington, Seattle.
By Rueters
An experimental vaginal gel containing a drug used to treat the AIDS virus could prevent half of cases of genital herpes, according to a study done in South Africa.
Among women who used tenofovir gel, the annual rate of infection with the genital herpes virus, known as herpes simplex virus type 2 or HSV-2, was 10.2 percent versus a rate of 21 percent for women who used a placebo gel.