Injectable PrEP and other options are in the pipeline, and that makes clinical trials more complicated
A clinical trial set to begin later this year will test whether an experimental drug injected every two months protects against HIV infection as effectively as a once-a-day pill called Truvada. If it does, the long-acting PrEP drug – for “pre-exposure prophylaxis” – would add another major tool to an HIV prevention toolbox that for the global pandemic’s first 30 years was limited to education, testing and condoms.
The study comes as the HIV field enters what researchers are calling a new era of prevention, with additional clinical trials launching that will test infusions of anti-HIV antibodies and a promising vaccine candidate. That’s extraordinarily good news for a pandemic in which 35 million people worldwide have died from AIDS-related illnesses since the first cases were reported in 1981 and 2.1 million are newly infected each year.