The continent's efforts to achieve greater public health independence is a work in progress. Here’s a look at what to expect out of some of these efforts this year.

The researchers activated specific immune cells that induce broadly neutralizing antibodies in monkeys. The next phase of the work will now move to testing in humans. “This study confirms that the antibodies are, at the structural and genetic levels, similar to the human antibody that we need as the foundation for a protective HIV vaccine,” says Kevin O. Saunders, associate professor in the departments of surgery, molecular genetics and microbiology, and integrative immunobiology at Duke University and first author of the study published in the journal Cell.

Zimbabwe has been able to approve two new HIV prevention products within six months and did so before any other African nation. How did it achieve this and what are the lessons for other countries that have urgent needs for new HIV prevention options?

January is Cervical Health Awareness Month, which makes this a good time to learn about the connection between HPV and cervical cancer. Approximately 13,000 new cases of cervical cancer are diagnosed each year in the U.S., and 4,000 women die of the disease, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Gaps in PrEP awareness remain among women at the highest risk for HIV in the United States, according to results published in Sexually Transmitted Diseases. Gabriela Weigel, MD, and colleagues compared women with indications for PrEP (n=689) with women without any indication for PrEP (n=5,452) on measures of PrEP awareness, clinician counseling, and health care interactions.

In October, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) published proposed guidelines for using the antibiotic doxycycline as post-exposure prophylaxis (Doxy-PEP) to prevent sexually transmitted infections (STIs). But, the agency’s proposal did not recommend it for cisgender women or other people assigned the female sex at birth, citing insufficient data.

Early in the morning, queues begin to form outside Lichinga Health Centre as medical staff prepare to treat patients, while nearby, mentors encourage people to test for HIV and learn about family planning methods. Their combined efforts to provide these health services in Niassa province in northwest Mozambique hold particular significance.

Oral PrEP for people whose exposure to HIV is through vaginal sex is just as effective as it is for exposure through anal sex, two re-analyses of the data from PrEP efficacy trials conclude. Lower efficacy among cisgender women, and zero efficacy in a couple of large trials, is almost entirely due to differences in adherence – not to any biological differences in the way PrEP is taken up by women’s bodies, or by vaginal rather than rectal tissues. 

Less than 1% of visits to the emergency room included an HIV test in 2019 and 2020, according to findings published in the February 2024 issue of AIDS. This is despite the federal recommendation that people in health care settings should be tested for HIV unless they decline (referred to as opt-out screening).

It was an imperfect but unprecedented step forward against a disease that can make life miserable for up to 100,000 Americans, most of them Black: In early December 2023, as The New York Times put it, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) “approved the first gene editing therapy ever to be used in humans. It’s meant to treat sickle cell disease, a debilitating blood disorder caused by a single mutated gene.”

Rates of STIs continue to rise in the United States, with CDC data showing increases year after year. We compiled a list of stories highlighting the epidemic and strides being made in STI care.

HIV affects 1.2 million people in the United States. Despite the development of effective agents for treatment and prevention of HIV, current rates of viral suppression, pre-exposure prophylaxis and linkage to care fall short of the goals set by the CDC for ending the HIV epidemic.

The results of a randomized clinical trial conducted in Kenya show that taking a dose of the antibiotic doxycycline after unprotected sex did not significantly reduce the incidence of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) in cisgender women, but many who were supposed to take the drug might not have, researchers reported today in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Almost all adolescents and young people having viral load monitoring in Zimbabwe do not understand why it is done, a recently published study in the Journal of the International AIDS Society has found. Most believe it's a procedure that enables clinicians to rectify poor adherence behaviour and they do not link it to improved health or quality of life, showing gaps in how routine viral load monitoring is communicated to and understood by young people.

Over the past 10 years, Australian diagnoses of gonorrhea have doubled, while diagnoses of syphilis have tripled, according to a new report released today by the Kirby Institute at UNSW Sydney. Chlamydia is increasing too (up 12% since 2013), and low rates of testing brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic have researchers concerned that the upward trends are likely to continue.

The dapivirine vaginal ring, an alternative HIV prevention method for women, will soon be available in nearly a dozen countries in Africa. This is welcome news, as adolescent girls and young women are among the groups most at risk in sub-Saharan Africa. But the ring is not available to women in the United States, who also need more prevention options.

The prevalence of transgender-related diagnosis codes in the United States increased nearly ninefold from 2014 to 2021, with significant increases in HIV testing and pre-exposure prophylaxis prescriptions in this population, data show. According to Ya-Lin A. Huang, PhD, MS, a health scientist at the CDC, and colleagues, pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) offerings and HIV testing for transgender women and transgender men “are important components of comprehensive preventive health care.”

The healthcare landscape is constantly evolving, and within this dynamic environment, groundbreaking initiatives are reshaping the way men who have sex with men and transgender women access HIV self-testing and pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP). 

An eclectic mix of countries have already reached the UNAIDS 95-95-95 targets, but others including Russia, Ukraine, and the USA remain off track. Tony Kirby reports.

This study sought to examine the role of providers as health discussants (HD) on interest in preexposure prophylaxis for HIV prevention in a national sample of adult Black cisgender women (N = 315). Health discussant networks, a type of social network, may be influential in HIV prevention efforts.

Oral pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) is an effective HIV prevention method; however, males over 15 years face challenges with its effective use. Long-acting prevention products could address barriers to effective PrEP use.

Sex workers, those who trade sex for monetary or nonmonetary items, experience high rates of HIV transmission but have not been adequately included in HIV prevention and Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP) adherence program development research. Community-empowered (C.E.) approaches have been the most successful at reducing HIV transmission among sex workers. Centering Healthcare (Centering) is a C.E. model proven to improve health outcomes and reduce health disparities in other populations, such as pregnant women, people with diabetes, and sickle cell disease.

Long-acting pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) with injectable cabotegravir is highly efficacious for HIV prevention in men and transgender women who have sex with men, according to study findings published in The Lancet HIV.

Peer delivery is a client-centred approach that could maximize the coverage and impact of HIV services for transgender women (TGW). We conducted qualitative interviews to examine how peer-delivered HIV self-testing (HIVST), sexually transmitted infection self-sampling (STISS) and oral pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) influenced prevention choices among TGW and their intimate partners in Uganda.

Imagine nearly eliminating a cancer that almost 350 000 women die from globally every year. The World Health Organization has set the goal of “elimination” of cervical cancer as a public health problem, defined as less than four incident cases per 100 000 women annually.

The global incidence of reportable sexually transmitted infections (STIs), including gonorrhea, chlamydia, and syphilis, remains high and in some populations has relentlessly increased. In the United States in 2021, the incidence of early syphilis among men who have sex with men surpassed any previous record.

Doxycycline postexposure prophylaxis (PEP) has been shown to prevent sexually transmitted infections (STIs) among cisgender men and transgender women, but data from trials involving cisgender women are lacking.

Stakeholder engagement is increasingly recognized as a key component of ethical research in leading ethics guidelines. Ethics commentators have also argued that engagement has several beneficial outcomes for the field.

The global burden of HIV remains unacceptably high despite significant progress made in HIV treatment and prevention. There is an urgent need to scale up the comprehensive HIV prevention strategies that include pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP).

Two modelling studies offer compelling evidence that less-than-perfect adherence to HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis can still provide reasonable protection for cisgender women — providing optimism for a more person-centered approach and lower discontinuation rates.

Most human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infections occur in cisgender women in resource-limited settings. In women, self-protection with emtricitabine/tenofovir disoproxil fumarate pre-exposure prophylaxis (FTC/TDF-PrEP) constitutes a major pillar of HIV prevention. 

Pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) with tenofovir (TFV) disoproxil fumarate and emtricitabine administered orally daily is effective in preventing human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) acquisition in both men and women with sufficient adherence; however, the adherence–efficacy relationship in cisgender women has not been well established. We calculated the adherence–efficacy curve for cisgender women by using HIV incidence and plasma TFV concentration data from three trials (FEM-PrEP, VOICE and Partners PrEP).