Every day, roughly 5,600 people around the world are infected with the HIV virus — that’s a rate of more than 230 new cases per hour.
While researchers are still working towards a cure, a new drug called Truvada is trying to prevent HIV from being transmitted in the first place. The results are very promising: in a recent study involving 600 high-risk individuals, the drug managed to prevent HIV transmission in 100% of the test subjects.
This isn’t Truvada’s first impressive showing. In previous trials, the drug had been shown to prevent HIV transmission about 86% of the time. In the most recent study, the participants — who were all healthy at the beginning of the study — were directed to take one pill every day. At the end of the trial period, all 600 participants remained HIV-free.
The study was overseen by University of California-San Francisco researchers Kimberly A. Koester and Robert M. Grant, who was named one of Time’s most influential people in 2012 for his work on HIV/AIDS.
In an editorial accompany the study, Koester and Grant call the results, “Tremendously good news.” They stress, however, that there are still many important questions to be answered before Truvada becomes widely available to the public:
“What proportion of the population vulnerable to HIV will take a pill a day to prevent it? How will costs of the medication and clinic visits be paid for? Assuming people are willing to use PrEP* and can access PrEP, will they take the medication as directed? Will uptake and use be higher or lower among those at higher risk? Will people place themselves at higher risk or HIV and sexually transmitted infections (STIs) as a consequence of using PrEP?” (*Editor’s note: PrEP = pre-exposure prophylaxis — this term refers to the use of drugs to prevent or reduce the risk of contracting HIV)
While there is no doubt that Truvada is a promising medication, the drug’s effectiveness depends on people’s ability to access it (including whether or not they can afford it), as well as their willingness to take it.
Koester and Grant also allude to the possibility that taking a drug that is supposed to prevent HIV could encourage people to engage in risky behaviors, like unprotected sex, more often than they normally would.
This possibility was at the center of a powerful anti-Truvada campaign when the drug first received FDA approval in 2012. The Washington Post reports,
Its high effectiveness at that time was still in question, and some AIDS activists derided it as a “party drug” and warned that high-risk individuals would use it instead of condoms — raising the risk of transmission of other sexually transmitted diseases. #Truvadawhore T-shirts went viral.
Since then, however, Truvada has continued to show impressive results in all of its clinical trials. The drug’s success has won over some of its biggest former critics, including AIDS Healthcare Foundation of Los Angeles, which helped lead the crusade against Truvada just three years ago.
The drug is currently being tested in dozens of other trials around the world. Researchers hope to use these trials to learn more about the individual factor’s that affect how regularly people take the pill, as well as how effective it is when only taken before and after sex.
Read more from The Washington Post.