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New research shows greater promise for the use of AIDS treatment drugs as a prevention tool, to help prevent uninfected people from contracting HIV through sex with a partner who has the virus. 19659002] There was no infection among gay men who used a combination pill of two drugs daily or just before and after having sex with someone with HIV, a study revealed. In a second study, no uninfected men contracted the virus if they had only had sex with a partner whose HIV was well suppressed by drugs.
Both studies were discussed Tuesday at the International AIDS Conference in Amsterdam.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, lead AIDS scientist in the United States, described the results as "very impressive" and "really astonishing".
About 36 million people worldwide have HIV and 1.8 million new infections occur each year, said Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
"The only way to end the epidemic is to prevent other cases of transmission," he said. Treatment drugs are "tools that, if implemented widely, could theoretically end the epidemic".
The expansion of access to these drugs is not only a humanitarian policy, but a smart policy. You receive a double: you save the life of the infected person … and it is virtually impossible for this person to transmit this infection to his sexual partner. "
Until there is a vaccine, condoms are the best way to prevent HIV infection, but not all of them use it or do it all the while." time, so other options are needed.
It has been shown that a combination of two drugs used to treat people infected with HIV, sold as Truvada by Gilead Science and generically in some countries, it helps prevent infection when one member has the virus and the other does not, but the evidence to date has been stronger for male and female partners. [196] 59002] A new study was designed as a life-size test of approximately 1,600 homosexual men in the Paris region who were at high risk of contracting HIV because of numerous sexual partners, reluctance to use condoms or other reasons. [19659002] They were offered preventive pills, oit for daily use, as recommended in the United States, "on demand", before and after unprotected sex. Just over half chose on demand, and tests were done every three months to see if they had contracted HIV. "Since we started a year ago, we have not seen a single infection." of the study, Dr. Jean-Michel Molina, of the Saint Louis Hospital in Paris. "On demand seems to be at least as effective as everyday when it is used in real life."
No one stopped taking medication because of the side effects.
"Now we can have so much confidence," said Dr. Linda-Gail Bekker, AIDS Conference Director and Deputy Director of the Desmond Tutu HIV Center at the City University. South Africa
The second study evaluated a different approach: keeping the virus of an infected partner severely suppressed with anti-HIV drugs, which greatly reduces the risk of spread.
Dr. Alison Rodger University College London conducted a study of 779 male gay couples in 14 European countries where one member was not infected and the other was taking drugs to suppress HIV. They were tested every six to twelve months to see if the infected partner still had the virus under control, and if the other partner had trapped it.
After a median of 18 months, none of the infected men transmitted HIV to his partner, despite about 75,000 sex acts without a condom. There were 17 new HIV infections among men who were not infected early in the study; showed that these infections were due to sexual intercourse with a person who was not the partner of the study.
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