A new drug which may one day prevent the dreaded Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), has been discovered. Already approved for the treatment of HIV and recommended on Thursday by the United States Food and Drug Administration advisory committee, the drug, Truvada, is to be approved for pre-exposure prophylaxis. It is an experimental strategy which forestalls the contraction of HIV. Manufactured by a US based firm, Gilead Sciences Incorporation, the once-a-day pill used in combination with other HIV drugs, does not rid the body of HIV, rather, it prevents the virus from replicating in the body.
Though discovered to be effective, the drug’s side effects include nausea, vomiting, dizziness, loss of appetite and diarrhoea, liver and kidney toxicity and loss of bone density.
According to the FDA panel, the call for its approval came after considering safety and efficacy data from three clinical trials.
The first clinical trial- a study of men who have sex with fellow men, indicated 43.8% fewer infections in men who used the drug as against those who did not.
In the second trial, a Truvada study carried out by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Botswana, infection rates were reduced by 63% over-all in healthy men and women considered to be at high risk of infection; while a study of serodis-cordant couples (a couple in which one partner has tested positive to HIV and the other has not) in Kenya, saw 62% fewer infections in those taking Truvada and a 73% reduction in those who took a combination of Truvada and the HIV drug, Tenofovir.
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