NPR reports on a big step forward in keeping a deadly disease at bay, with a new treatment for preventing AIDS transmission that, rather than a daily (and easily forgettable) pill, relies on an injection twice a year:
Now a new trial —- called PURPOSE 1 —- points the way to a new preventive strategy —- a twice yearly injection of a drug called lenacapavir. The trial was sponsored by Gilead Sciences, the California-based maker of the drug.
In this double-blind, randomized study of 5,300 cisgender women in South Africa and Uganda, 2,134 got the injection and the others took one of two types of daily PrEP pills. The trial began on August 2021 and, so far, not a single woman who received the injections has contracted HIV. The participants who received either of the oral PrEP options, Truvada and Descovy, had infection rates of about 2% — consistent with the infection rates of oral PrEP in other clinical trials.
These results were significant enough for the Data Monitoring Committee —- an independent group of experts appointed to assess the progress of clinical trials —- to recommend that Gilead halt its blinded trial and offer lenacapavir to all study participants. On June 20, Gilead announced these results, and now, all participants can choose to receive the injection.
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Lenacapavir is not a new drug. It’s been approved by the FDA in the United States for multi-drug resistant HIV treatment since 2022. But PURPOSE 1 is the first clinical trial to test it for HIV prevention.
The PURPOSE 1 trial is part of a larger initiative to improve HIV prevention across the global south. It is one of several studies that are part of ongoing efforts to end the HIV epidemic by 2030.