Healthy people at risk for HIV are advised to take daily pills that cut the odds of infection by more than 90 percent, U.S. health officials said in the first formal recommendation on using the drugs as a preventative.
The group urged to take the pills includes people with HIV-infected partners and those who inject illicit drugs and share equipment or have been in treatment programs for injection medicine use, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Wednesday in a statement.
Gilead Sciences’ anti-AIDS pill Truvada has been approved as a preventative medicine for the virus that causes AIDS.
For HIV, “there’s no vaccine and cure in the near horizon. Prevention is key,” said Jonathan Mermin, director of the CDC’s national center for HIV/AIDS, Viral Hepatitis, STD and TB prevention.
PrEP, or pre-exposure prophylaxis, is a step toward combating the AIDS-causing virus that infects 50,000 new patients each year in the U.S.
Gilead’s Truvada was approved for sale by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 2012 to be used as part of a prevention strategy that included safe-sex practices and regular HIV testing.
“It’s a potentially life-saving tool,” Mermin said.
Fewer than 10,000 people are prescribed the drugs for prevention, while almost 500,000 are eligible.
Mermin said the CDC’s new guidelines are to promote mass distribution of the pills, and the agency is working with other health organizations to conduct pilot programs to demonstrate the effectiveness of the approach.
The recommendations follow interim guidelines on the prevention strategy issued in August 2012.
Truvada, a combination of two drugs from Gilead, usually is covered by insurance, Mermin said.
The medicine generated more than $3.1 billion of sales last year for California-based Gilead, the world’s largest maker of HIV medicines.
For many, the cost of the drug, which runs about $15,000 a year, is an inhibiting factor in using the medicine as a preventative, said Victoria Richards, associate professor of medical sciences at the Frank H. Netter School of Medicine at Quinnipiac University in Connecticut.
“In other countries, companies have reduced the cost of the medication, and that’s where research is coming from,” Richards said.
The AIDS Healthcare Foundation, a Los Angeles-based nonprofit group that provides medical care to more than 300,000 patients, said they oppose the recommendation. The group said it could lead to a decline in use of condoms, which can prevent the spread of other sexually transmitted diseases.
