HIV Archives - Among Doctors

Picks of the Week: New recommendations for HIV, fibromyalgia and more!

Posted on July 24, 2016

Over the last days fellow colleagues shared articles, recommendations, and other noteworthy news on the Among Doctors network. Among them, there is also a very interesting blog post on Psychological And Mental Health by Professor Gabriel Ivbijaro (President of the World Federation for Mental Health and Chair of The World Dignity Project) that worths reading. Let’s have a look at the top picks of these news:

Migraine and risk of cardiovascular disease in women: prospective cohort study
Results of this large, prospective cohort study in women with more than 20 years of follow-up indicate a consistent link between migraine and cardiovascular disease events, including cardiovascular mortality.
EULAR revised recommendations for the management of fibromyalgia
Updated guidelines on fibromyalgia have been published by the European League Against Rheumatism (EULAR).
2016 Recommendations for Use of ARVs to Treat and Prevent Adult HIV Infection
Updated recommendations on the treatment and prevention of HIV infection, reflecting on the substantial advances of the ARVs, discussing the preexposure and post exposure prophylaxis, and considering the generics and their impact on pharmacoeconomics.
Effects of Pictorial Health Warnings on Smoking Cessation Attempts
Pictorial warnings effectively increased intentions to quit, forgoing cigarettes, quit attempts, and successfully quitting smoking over 4 weeks.
Association of Dietary Fats and Total and Cause-Specific Mortality
Dietary saturated and trans-fats were linked to increased rates of mortality. Replacing 5% of energy from saturated fats with equivalent energy from polyunsaturated fatty acid and MUFA was associated with estimated reductions in total mortality of 27%.
Making Psychological And Mental Health First Aid For All A Global Reality
The 2016 World Mental Health Day theme ‘Dignity in mental health – psychological and mental health first aid for all’ provides an opportunity for us to focus on an area that continues to provide challenges for people with mental ill health and their families, getting the right help in crisis.

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Photo credit: CC BY 2.0 by jonrawlinson

Posted in Picks of the week cardiovascular disease, dietary fats, fibromyalgia, HIV, mental health, migraine, mortality, smoking cessation

New recommendations on antiretroviral drugs for HIV infection

Posted on July 14, 2016

The International Antiviral Society – USA Panel published their updated recommendations on antiretroviral drugs (ARVs) for the treatment and prevention of HIV infection. With more than 37 million people living with an HIV infection in the world, and 20 million not receiving an antiretroviral therapy, the new guidelines reiterate that all individuals diagnosed with the infection should initiate treatment as soon as possible, regardless of the CD4 cell count.

Moreover, the guidelines reflect on the substantial advances of the ARVs since the last recommendations were released in 2014, recommending initial regimens of two nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors (NRTIs) plus an integrase strand transfer inhibitor (InSTI) for most patients. Further points on preexposure and postexposure prophylaxis are discussed, as well as the pharmacoeconomics of the treatment, especially considering the introduction of less-expensive generic formulations.

In the accompanying editorial on JAMA, Kenneth Mayer and Douglas Krakower consider the guidelines a reflection of a successful 35-year research effort and argue that, “Historians may wonder whether the pace of discovery in the early days of the epidemic could have been accelerated, but no one can doubt the signal accomplishments of biobehavioral research and community engagement in forging a common strategy to deal with this global pandemic, one that continues to pose new challenges.”

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Posted in Clinical Highlights antiretroviral drugs, guidelines, HIV

Picks of the Week: Vaccines for HIV-positive adults and new guidelines!

Posted on January 24, 2016

Everyday all of us curate information, appraise much content and select what is relevant for our profession based on our interests. We are very delighted to see that the result of this information curation can be useful for other colleagues too; the sharing of appraised information is taking off on the Among Doctors network indeed! Many news were posted once again this week by our fellow colleagues and we have a selection of them below:

Posted in Picks of the week diet, end of life, haemorrhage, HIV, quality of life, vaccination