Doctors Recommend A New Drug For The Prevention Of HIV Infection

Doctors Recommend A New Drug For The Prevention Of HIV Infection.
Should rank and file in hazard of contracting HIV because they have risky sex filch a pill to prevent infection, or will the medication encourage them to take even more sexual risks? After years of contemplation on this question, a new international study suggests the medication doesn't lead occupy to stop using condoms or have more sex with more people. The research isn't definitive, and it hasn't changed the opinion of every expert. But one of the study's co-authors said the findings support the drug's use as a disposition to prevent infection with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.

And "People may have more partners or stop using condoms, but as well as we can tell, it's not because of taking the analgesic to prevent HIV infection ," said study co-author Dr Robert Grant, a superior investigator with the Gladstone Institute of Virology and Immunology in San Francisco. The medication in inquiry is called Truvada, which combines the drugs emtricitabine and tenofovir. It's normally utilized to treat people who are infected with HIV, but research - in many-coloured and bisexual men and in straight couples with one infected partner - have shown that it can lower the risk of infection in multitude who become exposed to the virus through sex.

However, it does not eliminate the risk of infection. The US Food and Drug Administration approved the painkiller for prevention purposes in 2012. Few people seem to be taking it for balk purposes, however. Its manufacturer, Gilead, has disclosed that about 1700 people are taking the drug for that mind 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 exploration participants, who all faced hilarious risk 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 sluggish placebo. Those who believed they were taking Truvada "were just as uninjured as everyone else," Grant said, suggesting that they weren't more favoured to stop using condoms or be more promiscuous because they believed they had extra charge against HIV infection.

Grant said the design of the study allows scientists to better understand the choices that participants make. The observe is limited, however, because the researchers recruited participants instead of waiting for consumers to come to them. For that reason, it's impossible to know if people will seek out Truvada to run new levels of risk by, say, no longer using condoms. There are many skeptics, including the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, who fears that the panacea will simply encourage people to modify riskier decisions in regard to sex.

One of these skeptics is Arleen Leibowitz, a professor emeritus of buyers policy at the Luskin School of Public Affairs at the University of California, Los Angeles. She said the review shows that many people failed to take Truvada as prescribed and often didn't gain enough to be protected from HIV. That raises the prospect that some people would take risks because they believe they're protected when they in truth aren't.

Leibowitz also said some of the statistics in the study are questionable because they don't include enough participants. And she said the participants may have lied about their going to bed lives to please the people who interviewed them. "We'll be instructed in a lot when its use becomes more general. But it's unfortunate to do experiments on the general population".

For the hour the drug may be appropriate for some patients who need protection from HIV, but doctors should be cautious and represent sure their patients take the medication. The study is published in the Dec 18, 2013 online version of the journal PLoS One penis sleeve for men with ed. In other HIV/AIDS news, a new think over - also published in PLoS One - reports that 20-year-old men infected with HIV in the United States and Canada can envision to live almost as long as the general population and make it, typically, to their initially 70s.