No New HIV Infections While Using Truvada
No new HIV infections have occurred among more than 500 users of the Kaiser Permanente healthcare provider system in San Francisco in members using pre-exposure prophylaxis – better known as PrEP.
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved Truvada for PrEP in July 2012, and this past May, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommended that people at substantial risk for HIV infection should consider PrEP, basing its recommendations on findings from the iPrEx trial and others. Patients in this study were followed for 2.5 years. (Volk, J.E., et al., No New HIV Infections with Increasing Use of HIV Preexposure Prophylaxis in a Clinical Practice Setting. Clinical Infectious Diseases, 2015.)
Harm reduction strategies are worth exploring for other major public health challenges.