\"This Month in HIV\" is a monthly podcast series from TheBody.com that reports on critical news in HIV. Each month, we interview prominent individuals in the HIV community about the issues that matter most in HIV treatment, prevention and activism.

This Month in HIV
"This Month in HIV" is a monthly podcast series from TheBody.com that reports on critical news in HIV. Each month, we interview prominent individuals in the HIV community about the issues that matter most in HIV treatment, prevention and activism.

Top 10 HIV Stories of the Past Year
6 May 2008 at 8:00am
In this podcast, we'll take a look back at the top HIV medical stories of 2007. Every day a barrage of HIV research is published and presented around the world. Even if you were to read all the journal articles and research meeting coverage related to HIV, how should you evaluate the importance of individual studies? That's when it helps to know someone who is himself knee-deep in the research. Dr. David Wohl is a researcher and clinician at the University of North Carolina, and he's also an expert in our "Ask the Experts" forums. For years now, Dr. Wohl has been writing our year-end review of the top HIV medical stories for health care pr...
Tips and Tricks for Coping With HIV
21 Dec 2007 at 2:00pm
Being diagnosed with HIV can be a traumatic experience. Whether you're 15 or 55, the emotions that accompany an HIV diagnosis can be overwhelming -- as can be the millions of questions, small and large, that start shooting through your mind. Questions such as: How could this have happened to me? How will my life change? Who should I tell? Will anyone still love me? Will I have to take treatment for the rest of my life? In This Month in HIV, we've brought together four individuals to offer concrete tips for coping with HIV, whether you've just been diagnosed or you've been living with it for years. Our guests are: Dr. Robert Remien, a prom...
Sex, Privacy and the Law When You're HIV Positive
1 Nov 2007 at 3:00pm
For as long as humanity has known about the existence of HIV, there's been discrimination against HIV-positive people. Since the mid-1980s, people with HIV have been fired, evicted, injured, imprisoned, ostracized and even killed simply for having the virus in their blood. People with HIV have gone to prison for having protected sex without disclosing, or even just for spitting on an HIV-negative person. And they've been fired from their jobs for even less. So as an HIV-positive person, what can you do to protect yourself -- in life, in love, at work and elsewhere? This month, we're pleased to have Catherine Hanssens, Esq., here to expla...
Update on Hepatitis C/HIV Coinfection
30 Sep 2007 at 3:00pm
Up to one third of people with HIV are estimated to also have hepatitis C, and living with both viruses is no picnic. The good news is that, unlike HIV, hepatitis C can be cured. The not-so-good news is that being cured is sometimes far from easy. This podcast will focus on three people. We'll be talking to Tracy Swan, the Coinfection Project Director for the HIV activist organization Treatment Action Group. Tracy just finished cowriting a booklet about HIV and hepatitis C coinfection, and she will update us on the latest hepatitis C news and research. But first, we'll speak with Greg Lamb and Dan Durbin, an HIV positive couple who have...
Crystal Methamphetamine and HIV
31 Aug 2007 at 3:00pm
Plenty of attention has been focused on the link between methamphetamine and growing HIV rates in some U.S. communities. However, meth use isn't just a problem because it's an HIV risk factor. Meth has also become a major issue among people who already have HIV. Research suggests a growing number of HIV-positive people in the United States are using or addicted to meth, particularly in the gay community. In terms of meth's effect on HIV and HIV medications, there are far more questions than answers at this point. However, meth use -- just like any other drug addiction -- can cause people to neglect their HIV medications and their general ...
Having a Baby When You're HIV Positive
31 Jul 2007 at 3:00pm
Dramatic progress in HIV treatment over the past 10 years has completely changed our idea of what it means to be HIV positive. As the lives of HIVers grow longer and healthier, many of life's key experiences are back on the table. Since 75 percent of HIV-positive people are in their reproductive years, it's logical that one of those key experiences will be having a baby. Fortunately, in developed countries such as the United States, there are more reproductive choices today for HIV-positive people than ever before, although they may be hard to find. These choices mostly focus on mixed-status, heterosexual couples -- negative men with posi...
Sex and Dating When You're HIV Positive
22 Jun 2007 at 3:00pm
Dating when you're HIV negative is a challenge. Dating when you're *HIV positive* is doubly, maybe triply, so. After all, dating usually requires some strategizing. It's like a promotional campaign: You try to emphasize your strong points and play down any weaknesses. What does this mean if you have HIV? How do you get back into the dating game after your diagnosis? How -- and more importantly, *when* -- do you tell someone you are dating that you are HIV positive? There are so many questions about sex, dating and HIV that the whole idea can seem overwhelming. That's why this month we've brought together four people to help make sense of ...
State-of-the-Art: Women and HIV
23 May 2007 at 3:00pm
Although women now account for nearly half of all people living with HIV worldwide and more than 25 percent of all new HIV/AIDS diagnoses in the U.S., many aren't getting the support they need. Women are less likely than men to see a doctor for HIV, and are also less likely than men to continue in care. All of this makes HIV-positive women more at risk of dying of an HIV-related illness than HIV-positive men. This situation can be dramatically changed if women were able to take better charge of their care. What do you need to know in order to live a long and healthy life if you're a woman living with HIV? We asked this question of two wom...
State-of-the-Art: HIV Therapy for the Treatment Experienced
20 Apr 2007 at 3:00pm
What does it mean when your HIV develops resistance to many HIV medications? If you have drug resistance, what are your options? In the bad old days, if your HIV developed drug resistance, it was often a challenge for physicians to cobble together a powerful second regimen. As more and more people with HIV developed drug resistance, "salvage" therapy -- or, as we prefer calling it, "rescue" therapy -- became one of the hottest topics in HIV treatment. But the times are changing. If you are someone whose HIV has developed resistance to lots of HIV drugs, there are now more HIV medications than ever before that can help you -- and there are...
Breaking Research From CROI 2007
21 Mar 2007 at 1:00pm
How do you make heads or tails of an HIV medical conference with 1,000 presentations? Surely the 14th Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections -- better known as CROI -- is a gold mine of critical studies on every facet of HIV, from prevention to treatment to quality of life. We've covered this conference extensively on our site, but for people with nonmedical backgrounds, this coverage may be difficult to put into context. That's why, for our March edition of "This Month in HIV," we've interviewed two experts who can break down the conference highlights for people who aren't experts. Physician and researcher Joel Gallant, ...
Stopping HIV in the Black Community
24 Feb 2007 at 2:00pm
Though African Americans have been disproportionately affected by HIV for years, much of the community seems not to have noticed. Since 1999, Phill Wilson, the founder and director of Black AIDS Institute, has worked tirelessly to make sure that HIV is on the African-American agenda. He's helped break years of silence on HIV within the black community by bringing together some of black America's most prominent leaders. What makes Phill's efforts all the more inspiring is that he is HIV positive himself -- in fact, he's been living with HIV for 26 years. In February, Phill sat down with us to talk about the current state of the black HIV ...
Top HIV Medical Stories of 2006
31 Jan 2007 at 2:00pm
In TheBody.com's inaugural "This Month in HIV" podcast, we shine a spotlight on the top HIV medical stories of 2006. To provide a rundown, we talked with Dr. David Wohl, a researcher and clinician at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and an expert at TheBody.com's "Ask the Experts" forums. Each year, thousands of HIV-specific study results are reported in clinical journals and presented at an assortment of HIV/AIDS conferences. But at the end of the year, which of these studies really mattered? That's where Dr. Wohl comes in: Since 2003, he's authored TheBodyPRO.com's annual summary of the top 10 HIV research reports of the ye...