During a Monday, July 23, workshop event, speakers and attendees illustrated both the support and suspicion of using antiretrovirals as a method of preventing HIV-negative people from becoming positive. Julio Montaner, director of the British Columbia Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS, argued in favor of “treatment as prevention” through antiretrovirals, while Kenneth Mayer, medical research director and co-chair of Boston’s Fenway Institute, countered that more research needs to be done before the medical community endorses pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP). Audience members – on both sides of the issue – also spoke passionately.
The debate comes one week after the FDA announced it had approved the antiretroviral drug Truvada for daily use as a PrEP component, in combination with safer-sex practices, to reduce the risk of HIV infection among adults considered at high risk of acquiring the virus, such as men who have sex with men (MSM), serodiscordant couples where one partner is positive and one is negative, and sex workers.
Montaner cited statistics from a study done in British Columbia that showed as access to antiretrovirals was expanded, new HIV diagnoses decreased. He said that the success that HIV/AIDS medical professionals have had in treating HIV-positive pregnant mothers with antiretrovirals to ensure their children are born without the virus shows the promise of using such treatments for uninfected adults.