According to results of a ground-breaking clinical experiment carried out in South Africa and Uganda, young women are completely protected against HIV infection when they get a biannual injection of a new pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) medication.
Up to 5,000 people were enrolled in the Gilead Sciences-sponsored trial at three locations in Uganda and 25 locations in South Africa to examine the effectiveness of two more medications and lenacapavir.
“A fusion capside inhibitor is lentacapavir, also known as Len LA. It tampers with the HIV capsid, a protein envelope that shields HIV’s genetic material and replication-critical enzymes. It is applied subcutaneously once every six months.”
In addition to Lenacapavir, two other daily PrEP pills that have been widely used for over ten years—Truvada and Descovy—were also examined in this experiment.
Since none of the 2,314 women who got the lenacapavir injection during the randomised study developed HIV, the effectiveness was likely 100%.
In the meanwhile, the HIV virus infected 16 out of 1,068 women who took Truvada and 39 out of 2,136 women who used Descovy.
Following the first success, Bekker announced that the experiment will proceed, although in a “open label” phase.
“This means that study participants will be “unblinded”: they will be told whether they have been in the “injectable” or oral TDF (Truvada) or oral TAF (Descovy) groups,” she stated.
“A sister trial is also underway: Purpose 2 is being conducted in a number of regions including some sites in Africa among cisgender men, and transgender and nonbinary people who have sex with men.”
Most HIV patients now need to take antiretroviral medication for the rest of their lives. HIV patients run the risk of issues arising from the latent virus resurfacing if they stop taking their prescription medications.
Earlier this year, a group of researchers from the University of Amsterdam declared that they had effectively eradicated HIV from infected cells using the Crispr gene-editing method, which won the Nobel Prize.
At the molecular level, the technique works like scissors, cutting DNA so “bad” that sections may be erased or rendered inactive.
Even though much more study is needed to ensure that it is safe and successful, the researchers now want to eradicate the virus completely from the body.
-Raja Aditya
