Researchers and Clinicians Confront Today's HIV Profile

The Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI) annually assembles researchers from around the world to share the latest studies, important developments, and best research methods in the ongoing battle against HIV/AIDS, and related infectious diseases. CROI translates basic and clinical investigation into clinical practice.

The 2018 CROI, held in March 2018, demonstrated how far our understanding of HIV has come in the last 30 years, and revealed some cutting-edge science. The journal Topics in Antiviral Medicine has published a summary of CROI's key findings. Written by the Clinical Research Director of Bridge HIV at the San Francisco Department of Public Health, the summary reveals several areas of challenge or advancement.

Since 1997, the annual number of new diagnoses fell from approximately 60,000 to 40,000 in 2016. While this is good news, the bad news is that the proportion of men who have sex with men (MSM) increased from 35% to 70%. Additionally, new diagnoses in the U.S.'s southern states increased significantly from 37% to more than 50%. States with the highest rates of new infections include Florida, Texas, Georgia, and North Carolina, and these states alone account for 62% of new infections.

Increasingly, researchers and clinicians who work with people living with HIV are concerned about accidental or intentional drug overdoses. At this convention, experts indicated that overdose deaths increased between 2013 and 2016.

The full article can be viewed at ContemporaryClinic.com.

Reference

Buchbinder SP, Liu AY. CROI 2018: Epidemic trends and advances in HIV prevention. Top Antivir Med. 2018;26(1):1-16.