December 2, 2016
PreP Summit and Toolkit for Youth; Risks of Chronic Conditions Increase in Elders, But Deaths Down
Eric Brus READ TIME: 5 MIN.
The first National HIV PrEP Summit (NHPS) will be held on December 3 and 4 in San Francisco. The event will focus on the implementation of PrEP and other biomedical interventions as community-level options for reducing HIV transmission.
According to NMAC, a primary sponsor for the event, the main goals of the NHPS are to bring together HIV leaders and stakeholders to discuss ways for increasing access to high-quality PrEP services among people of color and ways for building the infrastructure needed to support biomedical HIV prevention.
In related news, NMAC is developing a two-part blueprint for HIV biomedical prevention. The first part of the blueprint, which will be released during the NPHS, will summarize the current state of biomedical HIV prevention. The second part, to be based on the insights of Summit participants, will include policy recommendations about biomedical HIV prevention for the next U.S. President's White House AIDS czar and the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services.
Increased Risks of Chronic Health Conditions in HIV-Positive Medicare Beneficiaries
People aged 65 and older who are living with HIV have significantly higher risks of many chronic health conditions compared to uninfected persons of similar age, according to new study by researchers from CDC's Office of Health Equity.
These findings are based on an analysis of national Medicare claims data from 2006 to 2009 for more than 29 million Medicare-eligible beneficiaries. For the purposes of the study, the CDC researchers considered beneficiaries with HIV diagnosis codes for outpatient, inpatient, or skilled nursing facility claims to be HIV-positive. They then compared the demographic characteristics and rates of chronic disease for the HIV-positive and uninfected beneficiaries.
A total of 24,735 (0.09 percent) of the Medicare beneficiaries studied were HIV-positive. The median age of the HIV-positive Medicare beneficiaries was about five years younger than the age of those without HIV. HIV-positive beneficiaries were nearly twice as likely to be male and five times as likely to be African-American or Hispanic, compared to uninfected beneficiaries. They were also more likely to live in California, Florida, New Jersey, New York, or Texas.
Overall, HIV-positive Medicare beneficiaries were about twice as likely as their uninfected counterparts to have high blood pressure, high blood lipid levels, ischemic heart disease, rheumatoid/osteoarthritis, or diabetes. In addition, compared to uninfected persons, the HIV-positive beneficiaries were about 2.4 times as likely to have one or more of these chronic conditions and seven times as likely to have all five.
"With the aging HIV-positive patient population, HIV providers in the Medicare network will have to prepare for patients with different medical needs, including a higher likelihood of chronic comorbid health conditions," the researchers note. "Similarly, chronic disease practitioners who serve in the Medicare network, such as cardiologists and endocrinologists, should be aware that their Medicare patients may be receiving treatment for HIV infection. Greater collaboration between infectious disease and chronic disease practitioners will be needed to ensure the appropriate medical management of these patients including complex medication regimens."
SIECUS Develops PrEP Education Toolkit for Providers Who Serve Youth
The Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS) has developed an online resource to support primary care providers who wish to offer HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) to adolescents and young adults under age 25.
According to SIECUS, the 64-page PrEP Education for Youth-Serving Primary Care Providers Toolkit combines existing and new tools and resources to help youth-serving primary care providers (PCPs) more effectively educate, counsel, and when appropriate, prescribe PrEP for young people.
The Toolkit is divided into six sections:
Global HIV/AIDS Deaths Fell by One-Third During the Past Decade
Between 2005 and 2015, the number of HIV/AIDS deaths declined approximately 33 percent from 1.8 million to 1.2 million per year, according to a recent report by researchers in the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) 2015 Study. The GBD Study provides a detailed assessment of all-cause and cause-specific mortality for nearly 250 diseases in 195 countries and territories during the 35-year period from 1980 through 2015. Globally, life expectancy at birth increased from 61.7 years in 1980 to 71.8 years in 2015, according to GBD researchers.
"Several countries in sub-Saharan Africa had very large gains in life expectancy from 2005 to 2015, rebounding from an era of exceedingly high loss of life due to HIV/AIDS" as a result of increased access to effective antiretroviral treatment for HIV and efforts to prevent mother-to-child transmission of the virus. The researchers noted that the significant decline during the past decade in the total number of deaths worldwide from communicable, maternal, neonatal, and nutritional conditions was largely attributable to major decreases in the age-standardized mortality rates for HIV/AIDS (42 percent) and malaria (43 percent), as well as a 30 percent decline in the rate of neonatal preterm birth complications and a 29 percent decrease in maternal disorders.
