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So far, the results suggest that the injectable drug cabotegravir was 89% more effective than pills at preventing HIV infection.
Researchers are stopping a study early after finding that an injection of the experimental drug every two months worked better than daily pills to help prevent women from contracting HIV from an infected sexual partner.
This news is a boon to AIDS prevention efforts – especially in Africa, where the study took place and women have few discreet ways to protect themselves from infection.
Results so far suggest that the drug, cabotegravir, was 89% more effective at preventing HIV infection than Truvada pills, although both reduce this risk.
The results mirror those announced earlier this year from a similar study testing injections versus daily pills in gay men.
Cabotegravir is developed by ViiV Healthcare, which is primarily owned by GlaxoSmithKline, along with Pfizer Inc and Shionogi Limited. The study was sponsored by the United States National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and ViiV. The drugs were supplied by ViiV and Truvada’s maker, Gilead Sciences.
“This is a major and major breakthrough,” said Dr. Anthony Fauci, the senior infectious disease physician at NIH. “I don’t think we can overestimate the importance of this study.”
The drug promises HIV prevention aid to young women – “those who need it most,” Fauci said.
Young women can be twice as likely as men to contract HIV in some parts of the world, according to study leader Sinead Delany-Moretlwe of the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa.
“They need discrete options… without having to negotiate with their partners” to use measures such as condoms, said Deborah Waterhouse of ViiV.
The study involved more than 3,200 participants in seven African countries who were randomly assigned to receive injections every two months or Truvada pills per day. Independent observers advised to stop the study after finding that only 0.21% of women receiving the vaccines had caught the AIDS virus compared to 1.79% of women taking the pills.
There were more side effects, mainly nausea, with the daily pills.
The manufacturers of cabotegravir are seeking regulatory approval to sell it for this purpose, and Truvada is already in widespread use.
“The urgent job now” is to make all preventive drugs affordable and more widely available, said Mitchell Warren, who heads AVAC, formerly known as the AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition, a nonprofit focused on prevention efforts which played no role in the study. .
Condoms remain widely recommended because they help prevent a myriad of sexually transmitted diseases, not just HIV.
“People need choices for HIV prevention,” and that gives a new option, Warren said in a statement.
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