Oh my god, this is fucking huge. It was huge when we developed a daily PrEP pill that could prevent you from catching HIV; this is a successful phase III trial of a PrEP shot that will only need to be given *twice a year*. Still needs a confirmatory Phase III, but holy fuck.
We could be the last generation to even live with HIV.
Gilead, do the right thing, please. Make tiny, tiny profits on each shot and make it available for a globally attainable price. 8 billion shots twice a year still brings in a lot of money for many, many years.
Even if just 1 billion x 20 years! Get it mandatory for direct care or any blood/body fluids contact.
A bigger community acceptance between the cover of “job requires it” -and- “Not out of the closet” or “sexually promiscuous”.
We’re still struggling with HPV vax acceptance cause “sex = bad”.
I hope for this too, but Gilead hasn't got a good history on doing that for previous drugs, as I recall. This is a chance for them to be heroes. Step up, Gilead.
And they push it heavily not just to the queer community or the sexually promiscuous but also for direct-care professionals.
As well as people with travel visas to higher risk countries.
Much easier to get people to keep up if it’s not framed as a sex proclivity like the recent M-Pox outbreak.
True.
Also here is where I admit something: When I went to get my mpox vaccination, there was an attractive man about my age also there waiting for one, and I briefly debated asking him out, because, statistically...
Or the foot-dragging reluctance of (often evangelical) parents to get teens inoculated against HPV, especially boys who can carry it with little or no symptoms.
Meanwhile, I was out there trying to find someone willing to give me the HPV vaccination sequence. The exact numbers might be different, but it was something like I was 23 when it became available for men up to 21, then 28 when it became available to 26, etc. Finally got it ~10 years ago.
0 seroconversions, N=2134, among sexually actively cisgender women in Uganda. Controls were other forms of PrEP (since placebo would be unethical): daily emtricitabine/tenofovir as Descovy had 39/2136, 2.02 per 100 person-years; as Truvada had 16/1068, 1.69 per 100.
I KNOW. They were comparing against existing daily PrEP because placebo would be unethical and it outperformed CONSIDERABLY. 0.0/100. n=2134. Just, my god.
I would guess so. You could compare it to the difference in birth control effectiveness between condoms and something long term like NuvaRing, Depo, or even implants or IUDs. It reduces the gap between perfect use and typical use.
Growing up in the age when sex = death for so many people, and it hung over us all like some sort of grinning spectre, I...I'm honestly just beside myself.
This really is immense on several levels. Not just for HIV, but when it comes to developing further protection from the negative effects of viruses in general, including COVID. Even PrEP was a huge step forward and still relatively new.
The "cure for AIDS" as a concept has always been treated as a vague future thing in a ton of near-future and scifi things as an example of the world being different, so something like this, looking like we're reaching that point, is just fantastic.
And anyone else who tries to be an obnoxious pedant going "But this isn't a CURE 🤓" is getting a block for not being able to read the whole fucking sentence where I just said that.
We have antiviral drugs that will reduce viral load to undetectable! But they are all much frequent dosage and as far as I know there hasn't been much luck in reducing the frequency.
We have a lot of diseases that don't have a "cure". We don't have small pox because of prevention of spread with a vaccine. not a cure. This isn't being called a vaccine but if it stops the spread it does the samw work socially if not scientifically.
Yes, it’s so exciting! I’m also hoping this leads to advancements in ME/CFS treatment (as certain ART protocols help some people…and there are connections between ME and HIV!)
I don't think I ever will be able to. I grew up in 80s theater kid just outside of New York City so I was only community- adjacent but I think I'll always be bitter and angry at what went down.
Good Lord, if it works as it seems to this could mean the end of HIV/AIDS in a decade or two. These researchers deserve a Nobel prize, or whatever medical researchers get.
