Advice to the media
Thursday, April 8, 2021
What
The COVID-19 pandemic affects people at risk for HIV or indirectly, as it interferes with HIV prevention and treatment services and directly threatens 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 rapidly introduce evidence-based strategies in real-world environments. This message comes from a peer-reviewed review article by Anthony S. Fauci, MD, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), a member 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 significant progress in reducing the global HIV burden. The authors point out that the COVID-19 toll in the HIV pandemic could be mitigated by increasing access to HIV treatment, for example, by prescribing several months of medication and ensuring that HIV prevention and prevention services are maintained.
Many questions remain about whether people with HIV have a higher risk of infection with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, and about the development of severe COVID-19, as so far there is mixed evidence. Rates of SARS-CoV-2 infection are similar in people with and without HIV. However, populations disproportionately affected by HIV, including black / African American and Hispanic / Latino populations, are also at increased risk of acquiring SARS-CoV-2 infection and developing severe COVID-19. Several factors contribute to the burden of these populations, including systemic health inequalities, socioeconomic inequalities, and a higher prevalence of comorbidities.
Although 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 related to a higher severity of COVID-19. Even when HIV is well controlled with treatment, people with HIV have a significant load of numerous comorbidities, many of which have also emerged as risk factors for severe COVID-19. These comorbidities include certain cancers, chronic kidney disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, cardiovascular disease, obesity, and type 2 diabetes.
The authors conclude that accelerated development and clinical trials of prevention and treatment strategies are urgently needed to mitigate the juxtaposition of the HIV and COVID-19 pandemics. This includes basic research on the interactions between HIV and SARS-CoV-2 at both the cellular and molecular levels, as well as clinical studies to evaluate the outcomes of people with HIV and SARS-CoV-2 co-infections, including impact of 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).
WHO
NIAID Director Anthony S. Fauci, MD, is available for comment.
NIAID conducts and supports research — at NIH, throughout the United States, and around the world — to study the causes of infectious and mediated diseases by immunity and to develop better means to prevent, diagnose, and treat these diseases. Press releases, fact sheets and other NIAID-related materials are available on the NIAID website.
Regarding the National Institutes of Health (NIH):
NIH, the country’s medical research agency, includes 27 institutes and centers and is a component of the U.S. 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 for common and rare diseases. For more information about NIH and its programs, visit www.nih.gov.
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