Americans Turn to AIDS Drugs to Prevent HIV Infection

July 23, 2011

Gilead Sciences Inc. headquarters in Foster City, California, March 12, 2009 (file photo)

New research in Africa confirms that a once-a-day pill, used to treat patients infected with the virus which causes AIDS, also works to prevent HIV infection in healthy people

.

For 20-year-old New Yorker James Krellenstein, the battle against HIV and AIDS is not a theoretical one.

Not yet old enough to legally buy alcohol in the U.S., Krellenstein had a scare recently, which sent him looking for an emergency treatment to keep from contracting HIV. “I didn’t use a condom, I was drunk, it was not necessarily the wisest decision in my life. He could have been HIV positive, he could have been HIV negative, I don’t know and I don’t want to spend the rest of my life dealing with HIV," he said.

James went on a month-long drug regimen that uses HIV medicines to try to keep the virus from attacking the body’s white blood cells and spreading.

Noted AIDS researcher Dr. Anthony Fauci says it's essential that this emergency therapy be applied quickly to stop HIV infection. “Because if it infects one cell and that cell dies but doesn't infect another cell then the infection is over," he said.

Doctors are already using AIDS drugs to prevent infections the way James was treated - as an emergency measure.