Call for abstracts: HIV and Healthy Longevity

Abstract

We invite submission of abstracts for oral presentation at The Lancet Summit: HIV and Healthy Longevity, a virtual meeting to be held Feb 24–25, 2022. Earlier this year, The Lancet journals marked the 40th anniversary of the first cases of HIV/AIDS being described in medical literature and the incredible advances in the understanding, management, treatment, and prevention of HIV in the past four decades. While helping to curtail HIV transmission and substantially increasing healthy life expectancy, the phenomenal success of antiretroviral therapy around the world has led to more people living and ageing with HIV than ever before. These individuals face major challenges including multimorbidity, complications from polypharmacy, and stigma associated with both age and HIV. Their pathophysiology may offer important insights regarding the role of immune dysfunction and chronic inflammation in ageing more generally. Additionally, HIV has been viewed as a highly morbid condition affecting young people, but as management has improved, many people ageing with HIV remain healthy and sexually active and may continue to use substances. This combined with substantial delays in diagnosis among older individuals, leads to risk of HIV transmission often unappreciated by the individual or their health-care provider. As global populations age more older people will be at risk of acquiring HIV and outreach may need to be better tailored to this group. In recognition of this demographic shift in people affected by HIV, The Lancet Healthy Longevity and The Lancet HIV will host The Lancet Summit: HIV and Health Longevity. This virtual meeting aims to bring together key opinion leaders in HIV and geroscience to present new research, analysis, and discussion, and to nurture cross-boundary collaboration. At The Lancet Summit, we hope to inspire new work that will help address specific challenges in HIV prevention, diagnosis, and treatment among older individuals. To facilitate this, we invite submission of research abstracts for presentation at the meeting on any topic related to HIV and longevity. We are particularly interested in clinical and implementation research that will help to guide practice and policy in the coming decades in a variety of health-care settings. Abstracts accepted for presentation will be published in one of the two journals. Deadline for submission is Oct 15.