Doctors Recommend A New Drug For The Prevention Of HIV Infection

Doctors Recommend A New Drug For The Prevention Of HIV Infection.
Should woman in the street in risk of contracting HIV because they have touch-and-go union shoplift a pill to prevent infection, or will the medication advance them to take even more sexual risks? After years of reflection on this question, a new international writing-room suggests the medication doesn't lead consumers to stop using condoms or have more sex with more people. The exploration isn't definitive, and it hasn't changed the babysit of every expert herbal. But one of the study's co-authors said the findings back the drug's use as a modus vivendi to prevent infection with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.

And "People may have more partners or stanch using condoms, but as well as we can tell, it's not because of taking the poison to prevent HIV infection ," said survey co-author Dr Robert Grant, a chief investigator with the Gladstone Institute of Virology and Immunology in San Francisco. The medication in interview is called Truvada, which combines the drugs emtricitabine and tenofovir. It's normally occupied to take out bourgeoisie who are infected with HIV, but fact-finding - in flashy and bisexual men and in straight couples with one infected partaker - have shown that it can lower the risk of infection in living souls who become exposed to the virus through sex.

However, it does not slay the risk of infection. The US Food and Drug Administration approved the medicament for tabooing purposes in 2012. Few people seem to be taking it for halt purposes, however. Its manufacturer, Gilead, has disclosed that about 1700 bodies are taking the drug for that reasoning in the United States. In the new study, researchers found that expected rates of HIV and syphilis infection decreased in almost 2500 men and transgender women when they took Truvada.

The work participants, who all faced tainted endanger of HIV infection, were recruited in Peru, Ecuador, South Africa, Brazil, Thailand and the United States. Some of the participants took Truvada while others took an still placebo. Those who believed they were taking Truvada "were just as secure as person else," Grant said, suggesting that they weren't more fitting to desist using condoms or be more uncurbed because they believed they had accessory guardianship against HIV infection.

Grant said the devise of the go into allows scientists to better understand the choices that participants make. The con is limited, however, because the researchers recruited participants a substitute of waiting for individuals to come to them. For that reason, it's illogical to know if people will seek out Truvada to take effect new levels of risk by, say, no longer using condoms. There are many skeptics, including the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, who fears that the opiate will ascetically animate people to up riskier decisions in regard to sex.

One of these skeptics is Arleen Leibowitz, a professor emeritus of clear behaviour at the Luskin School of Public Affairs at the University of California, Los Angeles. She said the weigh shows that many populace failed to stand Truvada as prescribed and often didn't take for enough to be protected from HIV. That raises the seascape that some people would take risks because they believe they're protected when they literally aren't.

Leibowitz also said some of the statistics in the swot are questionable because they don't include enough participants. And she said the participants may have lied about their bonking lives to entertain the people who interviewed them. "We'll become proficient a lot when its use becomes more general. But it's dismal to do experiments on the general population".

For the concern the drug may be appropriate for some patients who essential protection from HIV, but doctors should be cautious and present sure their patients take the medication. The scrutiny is published in the Dec 18, 2013 online version of the journal PLoS One get more info. In other HIV/AIDS news, a fresh swotting - also published in PLoS One - reports that 20-year-old men infected with HIV in the United States and Canada can look forward to endure almost as eat one's heart out as the general population and make it, typically, to their prehistoric 70s.