According to a novel study drugs used to treat AIDS can also prevent against HIV infections among heterosexual couples. The findings of two studies in Africa provide the latest evidence that drugs which control the symptoms of AIDS might also hold the key to halt the spread of the disease.
Even though these treatments have been used since the mid of nineties, but is only recently that experts have identified their potential as preventive drugs. Two new studies that include couples from Africa revealed that taking these drugs daily diminished the rate of infection by over sixty percent.
In larger study carried out by the University of Washington, US that included nearly five thousand couples from Kenyan and Ugandan, where one person had HIV infection and the other did not. The uninfected partners were given tenofovir, a drug made by Gilead Sciences and marketed under the name Viread or a dummy pill.
The infection rate for the HIV-negative partners taking tenofovir was sixty-two percent lower than a control group. For those taking Truvada, a mix of tenofovir and emtricitabine, the rate of infection was seventy-three percent lower than those given a dummy pill. The other trial, conducted by the United States Centers for Disease Control, followed twelve hundred HIV-negative heterosexual couples in Botswana.
It was found that HIV medication reduced the risk of getting HIV by about sixty-three percent. The earlier study tail has shown that HIV drugs reduced the risk of infection by forty-four percent in bisexual men. The use of AIDS treatments to prevent HIV infection called pre-exposure prophylaxis or PrEP, has become increasingly popular over the last year
It is subsequent to other research showing a fall in infection rates among gay men taking anti-retroviral drugs. Effective new HIV prevention tools are urgently needed and these studies could have enormous impact in preventing heterosexual transmission, explained Margaret Chan, director-general of the World Health Organization. They will work with countries to use the new findings to protect people from HIV infection.
This is a key scientific breakthrough which re-confirms the indispensable role that antiretroviral medicine has to play in the AIDS response. These studies could help them to reach the tipping point in the HIV epidemic, stated Michel Sidibé, executive director of the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS).