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.

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. 

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