new study has found that 100 per cent of participants taking Human Immuno-deficiency Virus (HIV)/Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) prevention pill remained infection free.
The study conducted at Kaser Permanente in San Francisco, United States (U.S.) involved more than 600 high-risk individuals, most of whom were men who have sex with men. These individuals were healthy at the time of enrollment and were put on a daily regimen of a blue pill called Truvada as a pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP).
Lead author Jonathan Volk, a physician and epidemiologist at Kaiser Permanente San Francisco Medical Center, described the study as “the first to extend the understanding of the use of PrEP in a real-world setting and suggests that the treatment may prevent new HIV infections even in a high-risk setting.”
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says that PrEP has been shown to reduce the risk of HIV infection by up to 92 percent when taken consistently but is much less effective when taken inconsistently. In one key study, called PROUD that included men who have sex with men in Britain, the risk was reduced by 86 percent.
In this study, 100 percent of the participants remained HIV-free. That’s right, not a single person in the study, published in Clinical Infectious Diseases, became infected while on the drug during the study period that included 2.5 years of observation.
“Tremendously good news,” University of California-San Francisco researchers Kimberly A. Koester and Robert M. Grant (one of Time’s most influential people of 2012 forhis work in AIDS) said of the results in a commentary accompanying the publication of the study.
Not long after the Food and Drug Administration first approved the drug for preventive HIV use in 2012, the Los Angeles-based AIDS Healthcare Foundation derided it as a “party drug” and warned that high-risk individuals would use it instead of condoms — raising the risk of transmission of other sexually transmitted diseases. #Truvadawhore went viral. But as more studies have come out showing how well it appears to protect against HIV, many of those critics appear to be turning around.
Koester and Grant emphasized that despite the promising findings in the Kaiser study many questions still remain, a number of them practical in nature.
“What proportion of the population vulnerable to HIV will take a pill a day to prevent it? How will costs of the medication and clinic visits be paid for?” they asked. “Assuming people are willing to use PrEP and can access PrEP, will they take the medication as directed? Will uptake and use be higher or lower among those at higher risk? Will people place themselves at higher risk or HIV and sexually transmitted infections (STIs) as a consequence of using PrEP?”
The pair said it wasn’t clear from the study if the reported rate of sexually transmitted infections in the study is an increase or not and that further investigation is needed. They recommended that Truvada be combined with a parallel plan to prevent other Sexually Transmitted Infections (STIs), which may include the use of condoms, more frequent testing and discussions with prospective partners.
Meanwhile, Nigeria is in a process of commencing a study on PrEP and Treatment as Prevention (TasP).
Nigeria is going into the study through the National Agency for the Control of AIDS, NACA, because of its immense positive effects on the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the country.
Until now, multiple studies have established that anti-retroviral drugs could be used to reduce the rate of infection in a population in two different ways, known by the acronyms PrEP and TasP.
Pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP, is a procedure for people who do not have HIV but who are at substantial risk of contracting the virus to prevent HIV infection by taking a pill every day. The pill (brand name Truvada), which contains two medicines (tenofovir and emtricitabine) were used in combination with other medicines to treat HIV. When so
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Thats a good news! They shld distribute it sharp sharp!

Good to know. Hope it can also cure those already infected.