Conference review: CROI 2015

The Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI) took place this year from 23-26 February in Seattle, USA. A  broad range of subjects was covered during the conference, such as paediatric HIV infection, PrEP, and comorbidities.

Stichting HIV Monitoring (SHM) was represented at CROI 2015 by Ard van Sighem and Colette Smit. Ard van Sighem presented two posters. The first poster reported on test-and-treat in the Netherlands, and looked at the proportion of patients diagnosed with a recent HIV infection and how this has changed over time. The results showed that at present, a third of newly-diagnosed men who have sex with men are diagnosed with  a recent HIV infection. In his second study, Dr van Sighem examined the number of undiagnosed HIV infections in the Netherlands. The number of people with an undiagnosed HIV infection seems to dropping. Nonetheless, around 25% of people with an unknown infection have been infected with HIV for more than 5 years. Colette Smit presented a poster on the HCV cascade of care in the Netherlands, which showed that 76% of HIV patients with a hepatitis C (HCV) co-infection currently in medical care in the Netherlands still require HCV treatment. Approximately 50% have never yet been treated for HCV and the remaining 50% have previously been unsuccessfully treated. The availability of new antiviral agents against HCV should, on the one hand, help to reduce chronic liver disease amongst HIV-infected individuals and, on the other hand, may contribute to preventing HCV transmission.

The posters can be viewed here.