July 19, 2016
Dear MTN Friends and Family,
Greetings from the AIDS 2016 meeting in Durban, South Africa, where we just announced that HOPE, the open label extension study for former ASPIRE participants, has launched. The first participant was screened at the Verulam clinical research site at the MRC in Durban yesterday, and we look forward to additional sites being activated in the weeks ahead. We want to thank Gita Ramjee and the entire Verulam team for their efforts in getting this first site activated. We also want to congratulate our colleagues at IPM who have also just launched DREAM, their open label extension of The Ring Study.
The opening of HOPE is especially gratifying in light of new analyses from ASPIRE presented today by Elizabeth Brown, the Principal Investigator of the MTN Statistical and Data Management Center.
One of the biggest questions we were asked following CROI and the publication of the data in the New England Journal of Medicine this past February was “how well does the dapivirine ring work in women who use it consistently?” To try to answer that question, Elizabeth evaluated HIV incidence after accounting for the amount of dapivirine released over time. Elizabeth compared the HIV incidence when the dapivirine rings were used consistently to the incidence among women using placebo, after adjusting for site and age.
So what did she and her co-authors report? She ran several statistical models and all showed that consistent dapivirine ring use was highly associated with reduced HIV infection. The lowest incidence of HIV was observed among women who used the dapivirine ring most consistently. During periods of consistent ring use the reduction in new HIV infections was estimated to be as much as 75% or even more. While the results of all exploratory analyses have to be interpreted with caution, the results suggest that the dapivirine ring can provide substantial protection if used consistently. We anticipate that in HOPE we will see high uptake of and good adherence to the ring. We want to thank Elizabeth and the entire team for these important analyses.
You can read news releases about these new findings and the start of HOPE here:
HOPE open-label study of vaginal ring for preventing HIV begins for former ASPIRE participants
Other MTN investigators with presentations at this year’s International AIDS Conference include Katherine Bunge, who is presenting the results of the Contraceptive Action Team in ASPIRE, as well as presentations from Liz Montgomery and Ariane van der Straten from our Behavioral Research Working Group who are reporting new data from ASPIRE. In addition, Jothi Moodley who works with Gita at the MRC has a poster on contraceptive use.
Please join us in celebrating our continued progress toward identifying new options for HIV prevention!
Our best,
Sharon Hillier and Ian McGowan