BACKGROUND Interventions incorporating constructs from behavioral economics and psychology have the potential to enhance HIV 'treatment as prevention' (TasP) strategies. To test this hypothesis, we evaluated an intervention to improve antiretroviral therapy (ART) adherence based on the concepts of social norms and priming. METHODS We used tools from marketing research and patient-centered des...

Antiretroviral therapy (ART) has dramatically modified the natural history of HIV disease. At the individual level it has transformed an otherwise fatal disease into a chronic manageable condition.1–3 At the community level there is now a compelling evidence that ART virtually eliminates HIV transmission.4–9 Further, early initiation of ART not only prevents morbidity, mortality and new infecti...

Background Second-line antiretroviral therapy (ART) based on ritonavir-boosted protease inhibitors (bPIs) represents the only available option after first-line failure for the majority of individuals living with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) worldwide. Maximizing their effectiveness is imperative. Methods This cohort study was nested within the French National Agency for AIDS and Viral H...

Bold claims of a ‘paradigm shift’ at the recentWorld AIDS Conference signal a striking remedicalization of our approach to the HIV epidemic and a return to the early 1980s view of the epidemic as a medical problem best addressed by purely technical, biomedical solutions whose management should be left to biomedical professionals and scientists [1]. This is reflected in the assertion by the outg...

BACKGROUND Traditional health practitioners (THPs) have been identified as a key local resource in the fight against human immunodeficiency virus/acquired immune deficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS) in South Africa. However, their approaches to the treatment of people living with HIV (PLHIV) have been met with scepticism by some biomedical practitioners amid increasing access to antiretroviral therap...

At present, the best hope for eliminating HIV transmission and bringing the epidemic of HIV to an end lies in the use of anti-retroviral therapy for prevention, a strategy referred to variously as Test and Treat (T&T), Treatment as Prevention (TasP) or Treatment centred Prevention (TcP). One of the key objections to the use of T&T to stop transmission concerns the role of the acute phase in HIV...

This article aims to consider some relevant challenges to the provision of "new prevention technologies" in health services in a scenario where the "advances" in the global response to AIDS control are visible. We take as material for analysis the information currently available on the HIV post-exposure prophylaxis (PEP) and pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), treatment as prevention (TASP) and ov...

Prompt uptake of antiretroviral treatment (ART) is essential to ensure the success of universal test and treat (UTT) strategies to prevent HIV transmission in high-prevalence settings. We describe ART initiation rates and associated factors within an ongoing UTT cluster-randomized trial in rural South Africa. HIV-positive individuals were offered immediate ART in the intervention arm vs. nation...

BACKGROUND Informed by recent studies demonstrating the central role of plasma HIV-1 RNA viral load (VL) on HIV transmission, interventions to employ HIV antiretroviral treatment as prevention (TasP) are underway. To optimize these efforts, evidence is needed to identify factors associated with both non-suppressed VL and HIV risk behaviours. Thus, we sought to assess the possible role played by...

DESIGN Universal voluntary HIV counselling and testing followed by prompt initiation of antiretroviral therapy (ART) for all those diagnosed HIV-infected (universal test and treat, UTT) is now a global health standard. However, its population-level impact, feasibility and cost remain unknown. Five community-based trials have been implemented in sub-Saharan Africa to measure the effects of vario...