The large clinical trial randomized more than 2,000 young women in Uganda and South Africa, where they received a shot of the antiviral drug lenacapavir every 6 months.
Stigma or violence
The goal was to investigate whether the shots provided better preventive protection against HIV than two other drugs in the form of pills (Truvada and Descovy) that have been used against HIV in other countries for several years.
Preventive protection against HIV in the form of pills has so far not proven to be effective in African countries. Especially in young African women, the group most at risk of contracting HIV, the newspaper writes.
– For a young woman who cannot get to a clinic in a city, a young woman who cannot take pills without being exposed to stigma or violence, an injection twice a year is the alternative that can keep her free from HIV, says Lillian Mworeko , the representative of the International Community of Women Living With HIV
“Got chills”
The result at a later check showed that not a single one of the 2,134 women in the control group who received the injections had been infected with HIV.
– I got chills, says researcher Dr. Linda-Gail Bekker to the New York Times.
– After all our years of grief, especially regarding vaccines, this is truly surreal.
Of the women in the control groups who had received Truvada or Descovy, 1.5 percent and 1.8 percent respectively had become infected.
Yvette Raphael, representative of an organization that works to prevent AIDS and HIV in South Africa, called the result “the best news ever.”
The hope is that the new medicine will make the fight and the prevention work more effective.
Sticks in the wheel
But the big stick in the wheel is the cost. Annually, the drug costs 42,250 dollars per patient. The pharmaceutical company Gilead, which manufactures the injections, writes in one statement that they are working to make the drug available to low-income countries.
“A key component of the strategy is to deliver lenacapavir rapidly, sustainably and in sufficient volumes, if approved, to high-prevalence countries that are primarily low- and lower-middle-income countries,” they write.
The results of the study have been published by lenacapavir’s manufacturer Gilead. But the study has not yet been approved. Nor has it undergone a peer review by other researchers.