A Massive HIV Breakthrough

[n2doc]

23 NOV 2010 12:17 PM

One suspects that the news that a single drug can drastically lower the chances of getting infected with HIV may not receive the attention it deserves. Tenofovir-Emtricitabine or Truvada is an old drug, well-established and not on the cutting edge any more. But it's the first drug that, if taken by HIV-negative men, has now been proven to help prevent HIV infection. Why? Because the drug - used to treat people already infected with HIV - presents enough obstacles to new virus entering the body's CD4 cells that infection fails to take place:

In the study, published Tuesday by the New England Journal of Medicine, researchers found that the hundreds of gay men randomly assigned to take the drugs were 44 percent less likely to get infected than the equal number assigned to take a placebo. But when only the men whose blood tests showed they had taken their pill faithfully every day were considered, the pill was more than 90 percent effective, said Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, head of the division of the National Institutes of Health, which paid for the study along with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

“That’s huge,” Dr. Fauci said. “That says it all for me.” The large study, nicknamed iPrEx, included nearly 2,500 men in six countries and was coordinated by the Gladstone Institutes of the University of California, San Francisco.

This could have real implications especially in those subcultures where using condoms is rare, where the closet or the DL make any candid discussion of HIV before sex taboo.

more

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2010/11/a-massive-hiv-breakthrough.html

[ejpoeta]

1. i am skeptical. not that this is true, but that if it is an old established drug

someone might not be able to make tons of money off of it.

[xchrom]

2. I'm not sure I understand what you're saying? Nt

[HillbillyBob]

3. It is a good drug to prevent infection

but the side effects can be awful.
I took this drug about 8 yrs ago.
Weird night mares more seizures than normal.
Food tastes / flavors go all strange for instance a banana tasted like aspirin for me. It also affected my appetite I would be terribly hungry then take two bites then spasms or just drop in appetite.

[Arger68]

5. I saw this report on MSNBC this morning.

They said it was available as a generic in some countries for $15.00/month. Here in the good ol' USA, it's around $1000.00/month.

[Name removed]

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