We have the pleasure to introduce the last issue for 2020, a year that has been rich in unexpected events around the globe. The present issue is dominated by retroviruses with several articles from Australia, the USA, India, South America and Europe focussing on HIV cure-related research and the potential impact of COVID-19 in this population as well as a viewpoint on the human T-cell lymphotropic virus type 2.
A landscape analysis of HIV cure-related clinical research in 2019 by Liz Barr and Richard Jeffreys sets the scene and describes the progress achieved with diverse types of interventions but also highlights the fact that the majority of the trials take place in the USA with underrepresentation of women.
One of the two papers by Karen Dube and colleagues argues for the revisiting of the terminology used in what is known as HIV functional cure.
Motivators to take part in HIV cure research have been the focus of many papers looking at this important aspect in terms of participation.
The second paper by Karen Dube and colleagues presents a scoping review of altruism as a motivator for participation in research within different contexts which could guide us in the assessment of altruism in HIV-cure research.
Jillian SY Lau and colleagues address the issue of involvement of people living with HIV (PLHIV) and affected communities in HIV cure research and report on the Australian INSPIRE project. The authors highlight the need to build up long-term relationships between community organisations, PLHIV and researchers to support meaningful involvement of PLHIV.
In another viewpoint Henriecke AB Prins and colleagues suggest that in the Netherlands hypothetical questionnaires about participation in cure research may overestimate the willingness of PLHIV to take part in HIV cure trials.
The impact of COVID-19 in the HIV population constitutes an important issue which remains under study. Sandeep Prabhu and colleagues conclude that at present there is no evidence of increased prevalence in PLHIV but equivocal data on mortality and worse clinical outcome.
Finally, the viewpoint from Brazil by Jorge Casseb and colleagues discusses the potential endogenization of the human T-cell lymphotropic virus type 2, a retrovirus which is endemic in some populations of America, Europe and South-East Asia with a differing type of pathogenicity as compared to type 1.
We remain indebted to and thank all the authors and reviewers for their contribution to the Journal which continues to be read widely with submitted papers from all over the world.