African-Americans comprise 12% of the US population, but, as of 2016, accounted for 44% of the estimated 40,000 new HIV diagnoses. 58% of the African-Americans diagnosed with HIV were black MSM. Statistics such as these, drawn from the 2016 CDC HIV Surveillance Report, are the basis of a recent ‘Decade Call to Action’ (Laurencin & […]
Category: HIV Epidemiology
Empirical evidence that achievement of UNAIDS 90-90-90 can deliver promised HIV elimination?
The achievement of the UNAIDS 90-90-90 targets would reduce levels of viral suppression amongst HIV+ people to 73% by 2020. The target is set at this ambitious level because, modelers suggest, it would bring about the elimination of HIV by 2030. In sub-Saharan Africa the challenge seems so great – especially in regard to the […]
HIV/AIDS in the US: the importance of local perspectives
Some recent studies, in STI and other journals, have sought to demonstrate the importance of spatial location as a determinant of STI prevalence in its own right (Haley & Cooper (STI); ‘Scoping Location’ (STI/blogs))). On the face of it, Brawner & Schensul appear to share this aim, in their comparative neighbourhood-based case study of multilevel factors affecting HIV transmission […]
Sexually transmitted infections are amongst the fastest spreading high-incidence notifiable diseases in China
Sexually transmitted infections emerge from a recent epidemiological study as a particularly pressing concern for Chinese public health at the present time. Yang & Li (Y&L) assess trends in incidence and mortality in 45 notifiable infectious diseases across China over the decade since the SARS tragedy in 2003 brought important changes in Chinese public health […]
Location of HIV-2 emergence determined by distribution of indigenous cultural practices of male circumcision
Sousa & Vandamme demonstrate a robust correlation between HIV-2 prevalence at the time of the 1980s surveys and the absence of indigenous practices of male circumcision earlier in the century. This is a complex and interdisciplinary study, involving some of the earliest large-scale, West African serological surveys of HIV-2 (1980s) and extensive ethnography of the […]
UNAIDS 2016 Report: How a ‘life-cycle’ approach can help the world ‘get on the fast track’ to HIV prevention
‘Get on the Fast Track: a Life-cycle Approach to HIV’ is the latest UNAIDS report, following on from the UN Assembly’s 2016 declaration of commitment to ‘Fast Track’ goals for ending the HIV/AIDS epidemic. The major theme of the ‘life-cycle’ appears to owe much to the findings of the South African CAPRISA study – above […]
Where next for HIV prevention in New Zealand?
A recent issue of the New Zealand Medical Journal (NZMJ) (128: vol. 1426) gives pride of place to a series of papers that reconsider the way forward for HIV prevention in New Zealand (NZ) against the background of the past thirty years. Recent contributions to STI journal by these authors analyse the behavioural surveillance data […]
Myth or reality? Are social media triggering an explosion in sexually transmitted infections?
On the whole, where STIs are concerned, social media have tended to be considered as a potential force for the good in public health, offering a new resource for the management of HIV patients, or opportunities for disseminating health messages via peer education (Swanton & Mullan (STIs); Peer group education (STIs/blog)). Recently, however, there have […]
Increased HIV infectivity in the acute phase of infection may be a less important factor in HIV transmission than we thought
Assessing, as far as we can, the preventative impact of ART on HIV transmission dynamics is evidently very important – both to inform judgments about ART initiation (Wayal & Hart (STI); Cohen (STI)), and also, at the policy level, to be able to evaluate the possible preventative gains of ART scale-up (Shafer & White (STI); […]
The varied nature of the US HIV/AIDS epidemic: what makes the South so different?
As of 2011, 38% of all US citizens diagnosed with HIV were from a block of nine states in the south-east, sometimes referred to as “the South”: Louisiana, Alabama, Florida, N. and S. Carolina, Georgia, Texas, Mississippi and Tennessee. Death rates among those living with HIV in this region were, by far, the highest of […]