HTB

CROI 2018 – highlights from the preliminary programme

Simon Collins, HIV i-Base

Essential for latest HIV treatment advances, the annual Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI) will be held this year from 4–7 March in Boston.

In addition to some of the best scientific research, this meeting has some of the fastest web coverage, so it will be easy to track and view the oral presentations, even if you are unable to attend the meeting.

Based on the preliminary programme only – posted online earlier ­– the following subjects have been highlighted for overview lectures.

http://www.croiconference.org/preliminary-agenda

We will also review highlights of the full programme after this becomes available a week before the conference starts. This will include the oral presentations and late-breakers together with the approximately 1000 new studies selected for the conference.

http://www.croiconference.org

Plenary lectures and overviews

  • Pre-conference workshops for young investigators. A day of overview lectures given by international researchers as grounding for the upcoming meeting. The programme includes the community-led Martin Delaney Memorial lecture that this year will focus on women in research.
  • HIV cure research will include results from using various compounds to measure, nudge and manipulate the resting cells that remain out of reach to antiretroviral medicines. It will also include increasingly used strategy of very early HIV treatment, in some cases even before seroconversion. A separate pre-conference workshop will also feature research to be presented at CROI 2018.
  • Women’s health is the focus of a separate workshop before the main conference that we will report with CROI 2018.
  • New drugs – including long-acting antiretrovirals and immune-mediated antibodies – for both treatment and prevention.
  • HIV prevention – PrEP and more, including impact on HIV incidence.
  • Breastfeeding – one of the few management situations where international guidelines are different depending on where in the world you live and on your resources in that country. In high-income countries, including the UK, guidelines routinely recommend using formula milk as this has zero risk of transmission to the infant in a setting where the risk of other infections is low. In situations where access to sterile water is difficult and where other background health risks are higher, WHO guidelines recommend exclusive breastfeeding, but only when the mother has an undetectable viral load on ART. A two-hour symposium on Monday will look at latest evidence for all situations.
  • A plenary lecture on growing up HIV positive and adolescent care.
  • Long-term complications: life expectancy and debate over immune activation and ageing.
  • TB coinfection: a session looking at TB diagnostics and management, including multidrug resistance.
  • Changing challenges of hepatitis C – including the potential to globally eradicate HCV, other liver complications and transplantation from HIV and/or HCV positive donors.

comment

STOP PRESS: The full programme (minus abstracts) went online as this issue of HTB was finalised.

http://www.croiconference.org/sites/default/files/uploads/croi2018-program-conference-information.pdf (PDF)

As with previous years, BHIVA will be organising a series of post CROI feedback meetings.

Please register online to reserve a free place.
http://www.bhiva.org/Croi2018ConferenceRegistration.aspx

Links to other websites are current at date of posting but not maintained.