Search for a Cure!

The below statement was written by Gus Cairns and published at AIDSMAP.COM.

It makes the claim upon review of the data collected during the iPrex studies, which our friend Dr. Ken Mayer from Brown University and the Fenway Community Health Center here in Boston was a part of orchestrating, that four doses of Truvada a week instead of dosing every single day is sufficient to prevent transmission of HIV. 

This is great news.  It is still our opinion at Search For A Cure that eventually there will be consensus that one dose, once, the day of a possible exposure will be sufficient to prevent transmission and we will continue to push the clinicians to seek out demonstration of that empirically.

We have now studied carefully a series of ways people could use antivirals to protect themselves and others from getting HIV.

One way we now know is to test and treat people, because studies show that people who use antivirals which get the amount of virus they have down very low become not infectious for all practical purposes.

Robert Folan of Act Up indicated to Search and many others via email correpsondence the developemnt of antiretrotrovirals for pre and post exposure prophylaxis of HIV infection.  As this past year has finally shown very strong efficacy of protection from exposure to HIV using Gilead's own product Truvada (emitricitabine/tenofovir/disoproxil fumarate), Gilead has in the wake of publicly funded proof-of-concept taken up the torch to complete the FDA approvals necessary to license its product for human indication as a preventive prophylactic product.  In practical terms, this is good as FDA approval will mandate that doctors are able to prescribe Truvada for prevention, and that insurance are responsible to pay for it.  We have known for many years that this would be a technically capable way of reducing transmissions and subsequently new infections of HIV, the challenge has been in figuring out who would pay for it.  Which this approval is a small step in acheiving. 

What is left to do now is to test all of the other existing therapies at different dosing schedules (including disco dosing)  to see if any of them work better or worse and what the optimal and most realistic dose schedule is for patient success.  If American medicine was based on science-led-science these trials would already be underway.  Since American medicine is based on finance-led-science, we fear it may take quite some time before we have answers to those important questions to the HIV community. 

Looking at curves can be fun for both the lecherous and mathematicians. With regard to the latter, you sometimes get a clue that something is not being talked about when you check out curves. Something important.

I ran across this the other day at a meeting at Harvard about global HIV transmission: the part about the USA broke out how many folks who are black guys are getting HIV, how many black women, white guys and so forth, and it occurred to me that there was a mystery going on.

We spent a lot of 2010 and 2011 doing outreach and education to try and bring advancements in transmisison reduction techniques including the use of chemoprophylaxis and the right to rapid at-home assays to the public ear.  In doing so we gained a lot of new friends and continued to win the support of many old friends in the effort towards better, more fair, and more sustainable public health.  in the read more section of this full article you will see at the bottom a Download attachment: line after the article where you can download the .pdf's of all of the supporters who aligned with us to help promote highly active prevention, now being called High-Impact Prevention by the CDC.  Please review the downloadable letters if you are interested or want to double check on the credibility of our supporters.  We are very grateful to all of them for all of the honest and difficult work that they do every day. 

PrEP Proven Effective in Heterosexual Nondiscordant Couples
Wednesday, July 13 2011
Search For A Cure Staff

Another chemoprophylaxis (the use of HIV antiviral medications before exposure to prevent infection from occuring) trial concluded this time between heterosexual nondiscordant (one partner infected one not) couples. 

The results affirmed once again that using HIV medication to prevent infection is a successful prevention strategy and is

Prevention: What drugs? When? For how long?

By David Scondras

December, 2010

What has been known for years is now scientific fact—a big study has shown antiretrovirals can protect people from getting HIV.

The latest news about pre and post exposure prophylaxis (PREP and PEP) using the Gilead drug Tenofovir (in its latest incarnation as ‘Truvada’ a mix of Tenofovir and FTC) needs a bit of history to understand both the celebration of the success of the new method and the frustration many feel with the delays in rolling out the method for practical use.

The way I remember the evolution of these new tools is from my own experiences as a Boston based activist.

Visit: http://www.avac.org/ht/d/sp/i/3619/pid/3619 to see updated source material about the iPrex study.

Pre Exposure Prophylaxis Initiative