Drugs For Treating Aids May Prevent People From Catching Aids

In one of the most promising developments in more than twenty years, scientists claim that drugs used to manipulate HIV / helps in patients might also be valuable in stopping the disease in the 1st place. The drugs in question are tenofovir ( Viread ) and emtricitabine, or FTC ( Emtriva ), sold in combo as Truvada by Gilead Sciences Inc. Gilead is the California company famous for inventing Tamiflu. Prior research has been directed at finding a vaccine against HIV / aids with the objective of conditioning the immune mechanism against the illness.

They just keep the pathogen from reproducing, and have recently been used successfuly by medicare employees to stop them from getting infected by the virus carried by patients. This approach to fighting HIV / helps has been alluring analysts for a number of years, but has only in the near past become possible as preventive drugs have been developed that are safe for non-infected folks to take. That situation modified when Tenofovir came on the market in 2001. Tenofovir is dynamic and safe, and it only must be taken once per day. It also doesn't engage with other drugs or contraception tablets, and manifests less drug resistance than other assists medicines. ** Monkey studies show exciting results A major study by the CDC ( Centers for Illness Control and Prevention ) in Atlanta, Georgia concerned 6 macaques. The monkeys were given a mixture of Tenofovir and FTC and then administered a dangerous blend of monkey and human assists viruses. They were given the viruses in colonic doses to simulate contact between gay men. Each was given fourteen weekly exposures of the pathogen, and not one of the monkeys became infected. In a control group which did not receive the drugs, all but one got the illness, typically after only 2 exposures. The results were similarly impressive.

Not one of the monkeys contracted the illness.

'We're now four months following the animals with no drug, no pathogen. They are uninfected and healthy,' reported a CDC analyst.

Now other research groups are pushing to have this drug mixture tested on humans. A $29 million CDC study of drug users in Botswana will now be switched to this new drug mixture. But a number of other studies have failed to materialize because studies of this nature straight away raise claims that scientists are using area folk as guinea pigs. The price of tenofovir and Truvada also make testing tricky. In African states prophylactics are now liberally donated by firms, help groups, UN agencies, and western executives. While the drugs are comparatively inexpensive, the cost remains an impediment. Nonetheless analysts have been reinvigorated by the shocking results out of Atlanta, and new tests are going ahead in pockets of interest around the globe.