At the end of the third week of lockdown, almost everywhere in the world, we have become more interested in the recent article in The New Yorker entitled ‘What submarine crews and astronauts can teach us about isolation’. In the midst of the 207,518 deaths among the 2,992,970 total cases confirmed worldwide as of 27 April 2020 and the rapidly growing number of research projects about the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, we are privileged to publish articles from the USA and Europe on HIV and COVID-19.

Andrew Hill et al. analyse the minimum costs of existing drugs that are potential agents to treat SARS-CoV-2 in small pilot studies, in order to help ensure mass availability at an affordable cost.

Victoria Pilkington et al. review existing available safety data of favipravir in previous studies.

Toby Pepperrell et al. review data about overall safety profile and cost of nitazoxanide, a thiazolide compound with antiprotozoal and antiviral agent, which has not yet been tested in COVID-19 patients but has been selected as a candidate for SARS-CoV-2 trials since it has shown promising results against Middle East respiratory syndrome and severe acute respiratory syndrome coronaviruses.

A further article by Toby Pepperrell et al. describes how phase 3 randomised controlled trials comprising people living with HIV partially represent the ongoing HIV epidemic because of the underrepresentation of participants, such as females and non-white populations. In a Viewpoint article, Karen Dubé et al. discuss willingness to risk death among people living with HIV in the USA participating in HIV cure-related research. According to the authors the field needs socio-behavioural reflection and utmost prudence in designing HIV cure trials in order to sustain the public trust. Allison Mathews et al. assess crowdsourcing contests as beneficial community engagement tools in order to promote uptake of HIV self-testing kits among African Americans in the south of the USA.

Christina K Psomas et al. present an overview of the Conference on HIV Persistence During Therapy held in Miami, USA, in December 2019, especially focusing on CNS and myeloid cell reservoirs, profiling of latent HIV-infected cells, CAR T-cell therapy, new therapeutic approaches of combinations of immune stimulants (TLR agonists) with either bNAbs or therapeutic vaccines as well as novel latency reversing agents, namely SMAC mimetics or inhibitors of apoptosis protein inhibitors.

Finally, Christina K Psomas and Sabine Kinloch summarise the Special Session of the 2020 virtual CROI Conference on SARS-CoV-2 epidemiology, prevention and ongoing therapy research.

We take this opportunity to thank again authors and reviewers for their much appreciated input to the Journal.

Article Category

HIV cure research

Article Type

Editorial

Posted Date

30-04-2020