Levinia Crooks, CEO ASHM
Clinical posts from members and guests of the Australasian Society for HIV, Viral Hepatitis and Sexual Health Medicine (ASHM) from various international medical and scientific conferences on HIV, AIDS, viral hepatitis, and sexual health.
CROI Opening highlights role of genital inflamation in HIV transmission
Quarraisha and Salim Abdool Karim opened with the N'Galy- Mann lecture. Their talks chronicled 20+ years of HIV research and epidemiology in Africa.
The CAPRISA 004 study into tenofavir gel used vaginally to prevent transmission was discussed. Salim gave a particularly interesting review of the analyses they did into why the results were not better. Adherence of >80% was associated with better protection, but concurrent genital inflamation, resulting in increased cytokine involvement in the vaginal region, was associated with a 14 times greater risk of HIV Infection. The whole presentation which went into a number of other issues will be avaiable on the CROI site soon, but the take home message from this was the importance of STI screening and the impact that STI s can have on priming HIV binding sites.