AIDS 2018, Amsterdam. Copyright IAS. Photographer Marcus Rose.

Burnet Institute has a strong voice at the International AIDS Conference (AIDS 2018) that’s underway in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

Our leading HIV researchers are there - headed by Professor Margaret Hellard, Professor Gilda Tachedjian, and Professor Mark Stoové - along with Burnet’s emerging specialists and mid-career scientists at the largest conference on any global health issue in the world.

Many Burnet staff had abstracts selected for high profile oral presentations, many more will present posters, or join the global delegation on International AIDS Society scholarships, ensuring the Institute’s groundbreaking research in this field has a profile at the largest conference on any global health or development issue in the world.

The AIDS 2018 Conference theme “Breaking Barriers, Building Bridges”, draws attention to the need of rights-based approaches to more effectively reach key populations, including in Eastern Europe and Central Asia and the North-African/Middle Eastern regions where epidemics are increasing.

Burnet presenters include:

• Professor Margaret Hellard - Symposia session: Key Population-Led Health Services: Optimising ‘prevention’ and ‘care’ cascades. Speaking on working with health care professionals and addressing structural barriers to improve key populations' access to quality health care services.

• Professor Gilda Tachedjian - Co-chairing a session on HIV transmission: Virus, host and microbiome, including a ‘setting the scene’ presentation.

• Professor Mark Stoové - Oral presentation and poster on HIV prevention in a Fast Track City: Trends in time-dependent HIV cascade indicators among gay and bisexual men attending high HIV caseload testing services in Melbourne, Australia.

• Dr Clovis Palmer - Oral presentation and poster on Polymorphism rs1385129 Within Glut1 Gene SLC2A1 Is Linked To Poor CD4+ T cell Recovery In Antiretroviral-Treated HIV+ Individuals.

• Michael Traeger - Oral presentation on Changes, Patterns and Predictors of Sexually Transmitted Infections in Gay and Bisexual Men Using PrEP; Interim Analysis from the PrEPX Demonstration Study.

• Kathleen Ryan - Oral presentation on continuing structural barriers to HIV/STI testing for migrants attending a community-based HIV testing service in Melbourne, Australia.

• Sophia Schröder - Oral presentation and poster on “You change who you hang out with”: Understanding hepatitis C risk behaviours and attitudes among HIV-diagnosed gay and bisexual men.

Poster presentations include:

• Jason Asselin - Understanding risk among male participants enrolled at clinicians' discretion in a PrEP demonstration trial in Victoria, Australia

• Jason Asselin - Impact of a population-level PrEP implementation project on clinical capacity and HIV testing among gay and bisexual men in Melbourne, Australia

• Dr Win Lei Yee - Implementation lessons of integrating early infant diagnosis of HIV at point-of-care using Xpert® HIV-1 Qual in four public hospitals in Myanmar

• Dr Duc Minh Pham - General self-efficacy as a predictor for HIV testing among female sex workers in Mombasa, Kenya

• Associate Professor Stanley Luchters - The clinical performance and diagnostic accuracy of an instrument-free, low-cost, point-of-care CD4 test (VISITECT® CD4) as performed by nurses, counsellors and laboratory staff among pregnant women in South Africa

• Liz Comrie-Thomson - Impact of male involvement beyond PMTCT: Male partner practical support improves maternal mental health in rural Zimbabwe

• Dr Duc Minh Pham - Diagnostic accuracy of Filtered Dried Plasma Spot (FDPS) for HIV viral-load testing using a newly developed plasma separator device

• Dr Tafireyi Marukutira - Comparing clinical outcomes of immigrants and citizens living with HIV in Botswana: A retrospective cohort study

• Dr Brendan Quinn - Dose-response relationships between substance use frequency, self-reported involvement in sexual HIV transmission behaviours and HIV viral load among men who have sex with men in Los Angeles

• Dr Clovis Palmer - Translational immunometabolism offers novel tools to understand mechanisms of HIV disease pathogenesis.

Find out more from the AIDS 2018 official website.