Trending News: The State of HIV Treatment, Prevention in the United States

An analysis published in the CDC Morbidity and Morality Weekly Report suggests that substantial challenges lie ahead for the Department of Health and Human Services-led Ending the HIV Epidemic initiative, according to Contagion Live. The authors of the report used National HIV Surveillance System data to estimate the annual number of new infections, estimate the percentage of infections that led to an HIV diagnosis, and evaluate the percentage of individuals with viral load suppression. The report highlighted a variety of barriers, including the underutilization of pre-exposure prophylaxis and groups of Americans living with HIV who either don’t know it or aren’t accessing effective treatment.

Children born to mothers with diabetes could be at an increased risk of developing cardiovascular disease before the age of 40 based on the results of a new study from Europe, according to MD Magazine. The report examined more than 2.4 million liveborn children and found that offspring of mothers with diabetes were 29% more likely to develop early onset cardiovascular disease compared with children born to mothers without diabetes. According to the study authors, these results call for greater attention to this potential link among physicians to prevent cardiovascular disease in the future.

A new study found that a greater use of disease-modifying therapies (DMTs) has led to a decrease in hospitalizations for patients with multiple sclerosis (MS), according to American Journal of Managed Care. Researchers in Canada used data from Saskatchewan government health administrative databases to investigate health care utilization rates at the population level for patients with MS on DMTs versus the general population in Saskatchewan. They found that of 159,396 DMT dispensations between 1997 and 2016, there was a decrease in hospitalization rates, with the drop greater among patients with MS.