US Considers Approving Drug to Prevent HIV
15 May 2012
This is the VOA Special English Health Report.
Studies show that a drug called Truvada can prevent HIV infections. The pill is taken once a day. Studies showed it was ninety percent effective when people took it every day. It was only half as effective when people did not take it every day.
Dr. Lisa Sterman holds a bottle of Truvada pills that she prescribes for patients at high risk for developing AIDS in San Francisco.
Currently, in the United States, the drug is only approved for use as a treatment for people already infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. Now a government advisory committee says Truvada should become the first drug approved for use to prevent HIV.
The Food and Drug Administration is not required to follow the advice of its Antiviral Drugs Advisory Committee, but usually does. The FDA is expected to decide by June fifteenth.
Mitchell Warren, head of the HIV prevention group AVAC, explains that Truvada is a combination pill.
MITCHELL WARREN: "It's made up of two different antiretrovirals -- tenofovir and emtricitabine. And those two drugs had already been approved by the FDA a number of years ago individually, and then about eight years ago they were approved as the combination drug. But all of those approvals related to the use of the drug for treating people who are already infected with HIV."
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