Sean R. Hosein

Montreal scientists found that 88% of cannabis users had an undetectable viral load. This suggests that a very large majority of cannabis users did not have problems adhering to antiretroviral therapy.

The scientists noted that daily ingestion of methadone provides an opportunity to supervise the consumption of HIV medications in places where methadone is dispensed.

A new study puts numbers to increasingly divergent trends in liver-related deaths vs. injection-related deaths in recent years, highlighting both the success of modern HCV treatment and the devastating effects of the opioid crisis.

"Providing HCV treatment alone while neglecting to concurrently address the social determinants of health will do little to improve the health outcomes of the majority of individuals with chronic HCV," the study authors wrote.

This will likely become the landmark study about the overall rate of neuropsychiatric side effects with this class of medicines over the next several years.

A Canadian study of this cost-saving approach found high acceptance of de-simplification among people already on a single-tablet regimen, and even higher rates among people who were just initiating single-tablet treatment.

In clinical trials called Sword 1 and Sword 2, researchers testing a combination of dolutegravir/rilpivirine (Juluca) found it to be effective and tolerable.

Researchers hope that by interacting with the toll-like receptor protein TLR-7 an experimental drug can help increase the immune system's ability to sense and attack HIV and HIV-infected cells.

Researchers found that around 90% of participants who were switched to a dual drug regimen maintained a suppressed viral load over the course of the study.

The results from this pilot study are exciting and raise many issues that need to be taken into account for future studies of broadly neutralizing antibodies.