Media recommendation
Thursday, April 8, 2021
What the
The COVID-19 pandemic affects people with or at risk of HIV both indirectly, by interfering with HIV treatment and prevention services, and directly, by threatening individual health. An effective response to these dual pandemics requires unprecedented collaboration to accelerate basic and clinical research, as well as the implementation of science to quickly introduce evidence-based strategies into real-world settings. This message comes from a review article with Anthony S. Fauci, MD, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), which is part of the National Institutes of Health, and colleagues, published in Journal of Infectious Diseases.
By disrupting critical health care services, the COVID-19 pandemic threatens substantial progress in reducing the global HIV burden. The authors note that the COVID-19 tax on the HIV pandemic could be mitigated by increasing access to HIV treatment, for example, by prescribing several months of medication and ensuring that HIV testing and prevention services are maintained.
Many questions remain as to whether people with HIV are more at risk for infection with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, and develop severe COVID-19 because the evidence so far is mixed. Rates of SARS-CoV-2 infection are similar in people with and without HIV. However, populations that are disproportionately affected by HIV – including black / African American and Hispanic / Latinx populations – are also at increased risk of becoming infected with SARS-CoV-2 and developing COVID-19. severe. Multiple factors contribute to the burden of these populations, including systemic health disparities, socio-economic inequalities and a higher prevalence of comorbidities.
While HIV infection itself does not appear to increase the risk of severe COVID-19, growing evidence indicates that specific comorbidities in people with HIV are associated with a higher severity of COVID-19. Even when HIV is well controlled with treatment, people with HIV carry a significant burden of numerous comorbidities, many of which have also emerged as severe risk factors for COVID-19. These comorbidities include certain types of cancer, chronic kidney disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, cardiovascular disease, obesity and type 2 diabetes.
Accelerated development and clinical testing of prevention and treatment strategies are urgently needed to mitigate the juxtaposition of the HIV and COVID-19 pandemics, the authors conclude. This includes basic research on the interactions between HIV and SARS-CoV-2 at both the cellular and molecular levels, as well as clinical trials to assess outcomes for people with HIV and co-infections with SARS-CoV-2, including the impact comorbidities.
Article
RW Eisinger, AM Lerner and AS Fauci. HIV / AIDS in the COVID-19 era: a juxtaposition of two pandemics. Journal of Infectious Diseases DOI: 10.1093 / infdis / jiab114 (2021).
Which
NIAID Director Anthony S. Fauci, MD, is available for comment.
NIAID conducts and supports research – at the NIH, throughout the United States and around the world – to study the causes of infectious and immune-mediated diseases and to develop better means of preventing, diagnosing and treating these diseases. Press releases, fact sheets and other materials related to NIAID are available on the NIAID website.
About the National Institutes of Health (NIH):
NIH, the national medical research agency, includes 27 institutes and centers and is a component of the US Department of Health and Human Services. NIH is the leading federal agency that conducts and supports basic, clinical, and translational medical research and investigates the causes, treatments, and cures of both common and rare diseases. For more information about NIH and its programs, visit www.nih.gov.
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