Updated data presented at this week’s Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI) showed the trial results held true through 144 weeks - nearly three years - and that the key challenge seems to be adherence. Those who took the drug most or all of the time (about 1/2 of the people in the study) had high rates of protection - over 90%. But because the other half took little or no drug at all (as confirmed by blood tests), the overal efficacy rate among trial participants was 44%.
After a long day at the conference, an eager crew of conference-goers - including researchers, people with HIV, White House officials and press - joined local community members here in Boston last night in the auditorium of Fenway Community Health for ARV-Based Prevention: A Community & Research Forum on Recent Results and What Happens Next, sponsored by AVAC and Fenway.
At the end of the formal presentations, I asked the panel (on behalf of the HIV Prevention Justice Alliance), “What are one to three next steps that are vital to making PrEP [pre-exposure prophylaxis] effective at the community or public health level, rather than just a boutique intervention for a few individuals?”
I captured the responses, which cover a wide range of issues and strategies, and wanted to share them with you. Panelists, in order of response, were:
- Morenike Ukpong, New HIV Vaccines and Microbicide Advocacy Society, Nigeria
- Kevin Cranston, Massachusetts Bureau of Infectious Disease
- Cate Hankins, UNAIDS
- Salim Abdool Karim, CAPRISA
- Jared Baeten, University of Washington and Partners PrEP
- Robert Grant, Gladstone Institute of Virology and Immunology
- Jim Rooney, Gilead Sciences
- Mark Hubbard, Tennessee Association of People With AIDS
Q and A: Moving PrEP from Promising Trial Result to Practical, Public Health Prevention Intervention? from HIV Prevention Justice Alliance on Vimeo.
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