Welcome to day one of the M2012 Conference, and to the Virtual Conference!
In this page you'll find the talks from today's Plenary Session, just in case you missed them or want to revisit them. You can view the videos below, or see them all on
Vimeo
Presentations
First presenter:
Connie Celum, Professor of Global Health and Medicine at University of Washington, USA
Plenary session: State of the evidence from efficacy trials: What we know and what we still need to know
In the opening plenary session, Dr. Connie Celum, principal investigator of the Partners PrEP Study, laid out the state of evidence from PrEP efficacy trials and what the results from these trials mean for addressing prevention needs of different groups of men and women at risk of HIV infection. A range of PrEP trials in different populations have shown efficacy from none to moderate (39% to 42%) to high (75%).
"We should celebrate the pivotal discoveries of the past few years that demonstrate that antiretroviral drugs work for HIV prevention," said Dr. Celum. "The oral and topical tenofovir-based PrEP trials have demonstrated that this strategy works in diverse populations, and the degree of efficacy is correlated with adherence."
Accompanying slides will be available shortly
Second presenter:
Frits Van Griensven, US Centres for Disease Control, Thailand
Plenary session: The role of new prevention technologies in concentrated HIV epidemics
In his plenary presentation, Frits Van Griensven spoke about the role of prevention technologies in concentrated HIV epidemics. Van Griensven spoke specifically about the concentrated HIV epidemic among men who have sex with men (MSM) in Bangkok as an example. The Bangkok example shows a situation where a concentrated HIV epidemic evolves outside of Western countries, and Africa. Van Griensven says: "As the HIV epidemic evolves and other factors such as HIV treatment, prophylaxis, population dynamics, development and socio-economic growth start to show their impact it may be time to start thinking about how to refocus our prevention efforts to stay in line with the evolving and diversifying HIV epidemic".
Accompanying slides will be available shortly
Third presenter:
Betsy Herold, Professor, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, USA
PLENARY session: THE Biology of HIV transmission: implications for the design of effective prep
In her plenary presentation, Betsy Herold noted that there are still gaps in our knowledge of the biological factors of HIV transmission that may have played a part in the differing ARV-based prevention results. Herold says: "As we move to design new microbicide and PrEP trials we need to understand much more about the biology of sexual transmission of HIV and more about how the drugs in microbicides or PrEP may be impacted by the use of hormonal contraception, biological changes in adolescence, sexually transmitted infections or other factors that may increase HIV risk."
Accompanying slides will be available shortly
