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Mon, 30 Aug 2010 08:09:51 -0700
Staying Negative: How An Unexpected Antiretroviral Result Is Reshaping The Battle Against AIDS Success Of A Vaginal Microbicide Gel Reveals How HIV-Prevention Strategies Can Emerge From Progress In Treatment By Lynne Peeples Scientific American August 25, 2010 http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=staying-negative The promising preventive gel, which cut infection rates among participating women in the South African province of KwaZulu-Natal by 39 percent, contained 1 percent of the antiretroviral (ARV) medication tenofovir, the same drug commonly taken in pill form as part of a standard HIV-treatment regimen. Its apparent safety and success also bodes well for other up-and-coming ARV-based prevention therapies such as pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP). "We need a dramatic increase in the prevention agenda to get down to our goal of 1 to 1.5 million new global infections every year," says Paul De Lay, deputy executive director of the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), adding that the pandemic's annual global growth is currently stabilized at close to 3 million new infections. An estimated 22.4 million people in Sub-Saharan Africa and 3.8 million people in South and Southeast Asia currently live with the virus. Meanwhile, the money being devoted to AIDS prevention and treatment across the world has also flatlined, forcing careful choices to ensure the "best value for our money," he says. "We can't just treat our way out of the problem. And we can't waste money on interventions that may not be valuable." The last two decades of strikeouts in microbicide prevention studies could have put this particular strategy into question. In fact, some of the gels tested actually appeared to raise the risk of transmission. But none of these earlier options contained any active ARV drugs. "It's been a long road, and there have been disappointments," says Halima. "But we now know a lot more about HIV. And we've been able to use that technology not only to develop very effective treatment strategies but also to help reduce the onward transmission of HIV." "Of course, getting from a p-value in a clinical trial to a microbicide in the hands of a woman is another long journey," she notes. [ to read this entire article http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=staying-negative] _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list pen-l@lists.csuchico.edu https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l