It’s been a confusing week with regard to PrEP-an HIV-prevention strategy which currently consists of taking a daily pill (Truvada) to prevent infection if one is exposed to the virus.
At a major conference for HIV research-the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections-the CDC revealed that, if deployed widely alongside pushes for more HIV testing and treatment, PrEP has the potential to help reduce new infections in the U.S. by 70 percent, preventing an estimated 185,000 new cases by 2020. Specifically, suppressing the virus to “undetectable”-and therefore essentially nontransmissible-levels in HIV-positive people could prevent 168,000 infections, while an expansion of access to PrEP to negative individuals could forestall 17,000 new cases.
Those numbers add to the promise of PrEP, which has been shown to be 99 percent effective at preventing HIV transmission if taken daily as directed. But of course, that statistic leaves a 1 percent chance of infection open-and, unfortunately, an instance of that 1 percent also showed up at the conference.