New Studies on HIV Treatment as Prevention

April 25, 2012

Cassandra James, right, Emily Bass, and Mitchell Warren chant slogans during a demonstration in New York. AIDS activists from around the world rally outside the United Nations headquarters calling for full funding for global AIDS treatment and prevention, June 8, 2011

Recent studies have shown that antiretroviral drugs can be used not only to treat HIV, but also to prevent infection in the first place. It’s called pre-exposure prophylaxis or PrEP for short. Now, the western U.S. state of California is launching new studies to determine PrEP’s effectiveness beyond clinical trials and out in the real world.

Treatment as prevention has been shown to be highly successful in clinical trials. But will it work for people in high risk groups as they go about their daily lives? Will they adhere to the drug regimen even if it’s taking only one pill a day?

These are some of the questions the California HIV/AIDS Research Program hopes to answer with three new studies. Mitchell Warren, head of the AIDS advocacy group AVAC, said these are “demonstration studies.”

“These are not randomized controlled trials where we’re telling people you may get placebo, you may get the active drug. And even if you get the active drug we don’t know if it works. These are studies that are going to work with people in communities in California. People who are at risk. [They] are going to be explained that we think this product works based on these clinical trials, but only if you use [it]. And provide it to a small number of people to really better understand the safety and effectiveness in areas outside of clinical trials,” he said.