| From: |
Adeyemo Gabriel [ profile ] |
| Subject: |
New lines of attack in H.I.V. prevention
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| Sent: |
Nov 14th, 2010 - 13:08:33 |
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Dear Advocate,
The hottest news in AIDS in the last year was the partial success in a South African clinical trial of a microbicide -- a gel women can put in their vaginas to kill the virus before it can infect them. The whole field of protection before sex is "red-hot cool right now," said Sharon L. Hillier, a gynecology professor at the University of Pittsburgh's medical school and principal investigator of the Microbicide Trials Network. "People are really energized."
Although the gel offered only about 40 percent protection against the virus, it was the first form of protection that women could use without men knowing, which is crucial because so many men around the world absolutely refuse -- sometimes violently -- to wear condoms when having sex with their wives or girlfriends.
Other clinical trials will report their results in 2011 and 2012 and, if all goes well, researchers hope to have a product or two ready to enter the market by 2013. The first may not be a gel, however. In the next few months, said Mitchell Warren, executive director of AVAC, an advocacy group for AIDS prevention, "we're going to see a cascade of results" from trials of what is called "oral pre-exposure prophylaxis," or "oral prep" for short. In them, men and women who are not infected with the AIDS virus but who regularly engage in high-risk sex, like anal sex without condoms or sex for money with strangers, take a daily dose of one or two of the antiretroviral drugs normally taken by infected people. If many fewer of those subjects become infected than subjects taking a placebo, a second breakthrough will have been achieved.
Thanks as we advocate more for a microbicide.
Yours' in the fight
Adeyemo Gabriel
Students' for Microbicides (S4M), Nigeria
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