Tuesday, March 28, 2006
AIDS drugs promise prevention in a bottle
ATLANTA - Twenty-five years after the first AIDS cases jolted the world, scientists think they soon may have a pill that people could take to keep from getting the virus that causes the global killer.
Two drugs already used to treat HIV infection have shown such promise at preventing it in monkeys that officials last week said they would expand early tests in healthy high-risk men and women around the world.
"This is the first thing I've seen at this point that I think really could have a prevention impact," said Thomas Folks, a federal scientist since the earliest days of AIDS. "If it works, it could be distributed quickly and could blunt the epidemic."
Condoms and counseling alone have not been enough — HIV spreads to 10 people every minute, 5 million every year. A vaccine remains the best hope but none is in sight.
If larger tests show the drugs work, they could be given to people at highest risk of HIV — from gay men in American cities to women in Africa who catch the virus from their partners.
Promise of a parachute
People like Matthew Bell, a 32-year-old hotel manager in San Francisco who volunteered for a safety study of one of the drugs.
"As much as I want to make the right choices all of the time, that's not the reality of it," he said of practicing safe sex. "If I thought there was a fallback parachute, a preventative, I would definitely want to add that."
Some fear that this could make things worse.
"I've had people make comments to me, 'Aren't you just making the world safer for unsafe sex?'" said Dr. Lynn Paxton, team leader for the project at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The drugs would only be given to people along with counseling and condoms, and regular testing to make sure they haven't become infected. Health officials also think the strategy has potential for more people than just gay men, though they don't intend to give it "to housewives in Peoria," as Paxton puts it.
Some uninfected gay men already are getting the drugs from friends with AIDS or doctors willing to prescribe them to patients who admit not using condoms. This kind of use could lead to drug resistance and is one reason officials are rushing to expand studies.
"We need information about whether this approach is safe and effective" before recommending it, said Dr. Susan Buchbinder, who leads one study in San Francisco.
source:http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12039614/
