HIV

Every week, The American Journal of Managed Care® recaps the top managed care news of the week, and you can now listen to it on our podcast, Managed Care Cast.

This week, the top managed care stories included a bipartisan group of governors releasing an outline for health reform; a report finds value-based contracts brings down prescription drug co-pays; 20 states file a lawsuit over the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act.

The National Comprehensive Cancer Center (NCCN) has released new NCCN Clinical Practice Guidelines in Oncology to help ensure that people living with HIV who are diagnosed with cancer receive safe and necessary treatment.

The FDA has tentatively approved Mylan’s New Drug Application for Dolutegravir, Emtricitabine, and Tenofovir Alafenamide Tablets, 50mg/200mg/25mg, for the treatment of HIV/AIDS, and the drug will be immediately available in developing countries as a first-line regimen.

A 9-week, telephone-administered interpersonal psychotherapy intervention reduced depression in patients living with HIV in rural areas, accrding to a study published in Annals of Behavioral Medicine.

From 2002 to 2015, CD4 cell counts at the start of combination antiretroviral therapy (cART) increased, and the proportion of individuals with severe immunodeficiency at the start of cART decreased among all income groups, according to a study published in Clinical Infectious Diseases.

Using an “ingestible mini pill box,” researchers have developed a slow-release pill to deliver HIV treatment. Once inside the stomach, the capsule unfolds into a 6-armed structure, accommodating multiple drugs at a time.

The most common reasons pepole give for never being tested for HIV is that they were "unlikely to have been exposed to HIV" and they were “never offered an HIV test," according to a National Health Statistics Reports.

The study will evaluate the current preferred first-line regimen for pregnant women recommended by the World Health Organization and 2 regimens containing newer antiretroviral drugs that are becoming more widely used.

Researchers at the Duke Human Vaccine Institute have developed a method that more accurately identifies new versus long-standing HIV infections, an important distinction when determining where to target public health initiatives and research.

Although people with HIV are more susceptible to the hepatitis B virus, there is a low prevalence of hepatitis B vaccination among patients receiving medical care for HIV infection in the United States, according to a study in Annals of Internal Medicine.

The same mechanisms that cause those with long-term HIV infection to suffer higher rates of heart attacks or strokes put children born with disease at early risk of cardiovascular disease, according to a new study.

While public funding through the National Institutes of Health has created a foundation for healthcare research, the private sector can benefit from getting more involved, said Bill Gates, philanthropist and co-founder of Microsoft.

Although an additional one-time screening at any age between 15 and 30 yields important gains in HIV diagnosis rates and life expectancy for HIV-infected people, screening at age 25 would provide the most favorable clinical outcomes and the best value for money, according to a study in the Journal of Adolescent Health.

The Trump administration dismissed the remaining members of the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS as it prepares to appoint members to the 2018 council.

The biggest barriers to stopping the transmission of HIV are both the large population of infected people not receiving treatment and the lack of pre-exposure prophylaxis for high-risk individuals, said Thomas C. Quinn, MD, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Global Health.