Twice-yearly shots used to treat AIDS were 100% effective in preventing new infections in women, according to study results published Wednesday.
There were no infections in the young women and girls that got the shots in a study of about 5,000 in South Africa and Uganda, researchers reported. In a group given daily prevention pills, roughly 2% ended up catching HIV from infected sex partners.
“To see this level of protection is stunning,” said Salim Abdool Karim of the injections. He is director of an AIDS research center in Durban, South Africa, who was not part of the research.
The results in women were published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine and discussed at an AIDS conference in Munich. Gilead paid for the study and some of the researchers are company employees. Because of the surprisingly encouraging results, the study was stopped early and all participants were offered the shots, also known as lenacapavir.
Amazing. Hopefully this leads to eradicating HIV for good.
Have you seen gestures broadly?
Yeah, I’m getting jaded as I get older. The optimist in me recognizes how ground breaking this is, and thinks there’s a real possibility of actually eradicating AIDS. The pessimist in me remembers covid.
if PrEP had been invented 25 years ago it would be banned
we’ve come a long way
If there’s profit to be made treating HIV/AIDS symptoms without curing, the profit motive health industry won’t like this. Solve the problem, their profits go away.
Then some other company will do it. Not all world is US and A. Is some areas like Europe the states would be more than happy to order those vaccines to treat their citizens. There’s demand made by public health organizations, there will be someone willing to join the race and eat that cake.