HIV-Drugs Tested on Virus-Free People for Prevention

By Simeon Bennett

July 22 (Bloomberg) -- HIV drugs will be given to people who don't have the virus by U.S. scientists to determine whether the medicines can protect those at greatest risk of catching the AIDS-causing disease.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta are recruiting volunteers in Thailand, Botswana and the U.S. to test so-called pre-exposure prophylaxis as a means of prevention. The National Institutes of Health is planning a trial for Peru and Ecuador, researchers told an AIDS conference in Sydney today.

The theory suggests that taking anti-HIV drugs before potential exposure to the virus can protect a person against acquiring it through risky sex or intravenous drug use. It's controversial because of concern it may raise resistance to the drugs, making them less effective when infection happens.

``We don't yet have definitive proof this is effective,'' Dawn Smith, the CDC's associate chief for science, told the conference.

Unlike other experimental approaches to fighting HIV such as vaccines and microbicides, the technique uses drugs that are already in use, such as Gilead Sciences Inc.'s Viread and Truvada. The regime has been shown to lower the risk of infection in monkeys, according to the AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition.

U.S. Trial

The U.S. trial will target young black males who have sex with men because they are statistically more at risk of contracting HIV than their white peers, Smith said. The Thai trial will target as many as 2,000 injecting drug users, and the trial in Botswana will recruit as many as 1,200 heterosexual men and women. The CDC expects its first set of results by mid-next year, Smith said.

As many as 1,400 men who have sex with men may be enrolled in the study in Peru and Ecuador. Participants will take one tablet a day of Truvada, said Robert Grant, associate professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, who is heading the study in Peru and Ecuador.

Read Full Story at: Bloomberg.com