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If for some reason you still doubt PrEP. read this... (New Yorker article)


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http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/elements/2013/10/the-battle-over-truvada-and-the-first-treatment-to-prevent-hiv.html

On the efficacy of Truvada as PrEP:

The corresponding figures for PrEP are much better: while adherence is a concern, as it is with condoms, Truvada offers H.I.V. protection that is more effective than any other method short of abstinence. In the N.I.H. study, for example, 5.2 per cent of the placebo group “seroconverted,” or became H.I.V. positive, compared with 2.9 per cent of the Truvada group. That’s a forty-four-per-cent added protection over-all—better than inconsistent condom use. More impressively, patients who maintained a detectable amount of the drug in their system were protected at a rate of ninety-five per cent. (A later statistical analysis estimated that the drug would need to be taken four times a week to offer protection in that range.) Grant said that people in the study who took the drug four to seven days a week “were absolutely protected. We didn’t have anyone seroconvert in our cohort in the United States.”

On Truvada's side effects:

Taking Truvada to prevent H.I.V. comes with very few risks. In the N.I.H. study, one in two hundred people had to temporarily go off the pill owing to kidney issues, but even those people were able to resume treatment after a couple of weeks. While bone-density loss occasionally occurs in Truvada takers who are already infected with the virus, no significant bone issues have emerged in the PrEP studies. And though about one in ten PrEP takers suffer from nausea at the onset of treatment, it usually dissipates after a couple of weeks. According to the U.N. panel’s Karim, Truvada’s side-effects profile is “terrific,” and Grant said that common daily medications like aspirin and birth control, as well as drugs to control blood pressure and cholesterol, are all arguably more toxic than Truvada.

I agree they are peobably trying to minimize side effects in the article, but it does prove a point, that taking PrEP even for an extended period of time is still much better than HIV, or any number of other drugs.

Read the entire article though, its actually amazing how effective PrEP is in preventing HIV. When you account for condom breakage and misuse, its MUCH more effective at preventing HIV than condoms are.

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