This Week in Infectious Disease: HIV Treatments and Vaccine Safety

From the New England Journal of Medicine, a trial reported that nevirapine plus lamivudine and zidovudine improved lymphocyte counts and reduced adverse effects compared to efavirenz in HIV patients. ^[2] The authors describe a 3-month follow-up period where the nevirapine group demonstrated higher CD3+ and CD4+ levels with lower CD8+ levels and fewer adverse effects. It's important to note that the study size was limited, so broader conclusions are premature. Meanwhile, in Human Vaccines & Immunotherapeutics, a Phase 3 trial of the Ad5-nCoV vaccine showed no increased short-term HIV infection risk in 44,247 participants across five countries. ^[1] The six-month follow-up period found similar HIV incidence rates between the vaccine and placebo groups, suggesting that pre-existing adenovirus type 5 neutralizing antibodies do not confer an increased risk of HIV infection following vaccination, though this assessment is limited to short-term outcomes.