Volume 11 Number 7/8 July/August2010

In this issue we lead with reports from the 18th International AIDS Conference, which took place in Vienna in July.

As we explain in our introduction, access to treatment, to which there are many barriers – including unjust legislation, donor funding and lack of commitment from local governments – is always the focus of this meeting.

We will look at some of the aspects of treatment access in our next issue, togther with side effects and other complications.

In this issue we report the headline grabbing results from the CAPRISA 004 trial, which proved the principle that an antiretroviral microbicide can protect against HIV transmission. Although there is a lot more work to be done, this was an important finding in a field with little success to date.

We also report on new drug development, antiretroviral strategies and maternal and child health.

Additionally at IAS the Treatment Action Group (TAG) in New York launched their 2010 Pipeline Report, which reviews all the latest developments in the treatment pipeline for HIV, tuberculosis, hepatitis C, and this year, hepatitis B. This year i-Base collaborated with TAG on the report. Simon Collins contributed an in-depth analysis of the antiretroviral pipeline and Polly Clayden wrote new chapters for the report on paediatric antiretrovirals and HIV diagnostics.

We have worked with TAG on several projects. This includes our guide to hepatitis C coinfection with Tracy Swan and we regularly include in HTB Richard Jefferys basic science articles from his blog. We have always been fans of the Pipeline Report so were delighted to work with TAG on this one!

We include a selection of the articles from the report as a supplement to this issue of HTB.