via The Huffington Post, by David Ernesto Munar
Lives will be saved when the Food and Drug Administration puts its stamp of approval on a groundbreaking preventative approach called pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP, recently found to reduce HIV infections.
With PrEP, people who are not infected with HIV take a daily pill, usually used to treat the disease, to help prevent infection -- as part of a broad HIV prevention approach that includes condoms and safer-sex counseling.
But the longer the FDA waits before beginning its review of the HIV medication Truvada for prevention, the more lives will be unnecessarily lost. This is particularly true for those at greatest risk: gay and bisexual men.
We urge the FDA to immediately begin its review for approval of Truvada for PrEP for gay and bisexual men.
Last year the iPrEX trial, touted as the scientific breakthrough of the year by TIME magazine, found that gay, bi and other men who have sex with men who took Truvada, along with counseling and condoms, had 42 percent fewer HIV infections than with counseling and condoms alone. Among those who used the prevention pill most consistently, the drop in infections was far greater.
And remember the sobering context: between 2006 and 2009, the number of young gay African-American men infected with HIV in the United States increased by 48 percent, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control.
Read the rest.
[Content that is linked from other sources is for informational purposes and should not construe a Mapping Pathways position.]
Lives will be saved when the Food and Drug Administration puts its stamp of approval on a groundbreaking preventative approach called pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP, recently found to reduce HIV infections.But the longer the FDA waits before beginning its review of the HIV medication Truvada for prevention, the more lives will be unnecessarily lost. This is particularly true for those at greatest risk: gay and bisexual men.
We urge the FDA to immediately begin its review for approval of Truvada for PrEP for gay and bisexual men.
Last year the iPrEX trial, touted as the scientific breakthrough of the year by TIME magazine, found that gay, bi and other men who have sex with men who took Truvada, along with counseling and condoms, had 42 percent fewer HIV infections than with counseling and condoms alone. Among those who used the prevention pill most consistently, the drop in infections was far greater.
And remember the sobering context: between 2006 and 2009, the number of young gay African-American men infected with HIV in the United States increased by 48 percent, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control.
Read the rest.
[Content that is linked from other sources is for informational purposes and should not construe a Mapping Pathways position.]
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