A nurse prepares to collect blood from a donor during a volunteer blood donation campaign to mark World AIDS Day. (Photo : Getty Images/ China Photos)
HIV cure and prevention have been in the one of the highly funded campaigns by the world organizations to stop the proliferation of AIDS. Recent HIV/ AIDS updates revealed that a first human trials of injectable drug to prevent HIV is already underway.
Despite the efforts of world government to suppress the disease and decrease transmission, 36.7 million people are still living with HIV globally with 40 percent of the said population not knowing their status, according to Avert. This number translates to roughly a global HIV prevalence of 0.8 percent.
The vast majority of these individuals living with HIV and dying from AID later on are coming from a low and middle income countries, like the sub-Saharan Africa. Thus, prompting the world government and health organization to take steps in improving the methods of preventing HIV, including said injectable.
"We urgently need more HIV prevention tools that fit easily into people's lives," News-Medical quoted director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) Anthony S. Fauci as saying. "Although daily oral Truvada clearly works for HIV prevention, taking a daily pill while feeling healthy can be difficult for some people. If proven effective, injectable cabotegravir has the potential to become an acceptable, discreet and convenient alternative for HIV prevention."
In order for this test to be successful, it would require the participation of 4,500 men who have sex with men. Aside from men, the test would also include transgender women who have sex with men at 45 sites in eight countries in the Americas, Asia and Africa.
Such population for study is necessary for it has been observed by experts that there has been a rise of HIV incidents from such class despite nearly flat HIV incidence among adults worldwide. With the participation of human subjects, experts hope that the study has the potential to provide game changing data as the first large-scale test of a long-acting injectable drug commences.
Watch here below recent HIV cure and prevention updates:
