Just before “Treatment as Prevention” hit the headlines with some controversy, PrEP or Pre Exposure Prophylaxis, was on everybody’s lips.

PrEP is an experimental approach that would use antiretroviral medications (ARVs, which are normally used to treat people living with HIV) to reduce the risk of HIV infection in HIV-negative people. In this intervention, HIV-negative people would take a single drug or a combination of drugs with the hope that it would lower their risk of infection if exposed to HIV. PrEP trials are ongoing around the world. (Source: AVAC)

Whilst some …

Treatment as a means to prevent HIV infection has hit the media following a declaration by Brian Williams, professor of epidemiology at the South African Centre for Epidemiological Modelling and Analysis in Stellenbosch, at the AAAS in San Diego.
Whilst the HIV epidemic has shown some signs of stabilisation in the recent years, more than 7,000 people are still infected every day with the virus that causes AIDS.
Despite interesting results of a vaccine trial in Thailand, prevention is still limited to a small number of options many of which are not …

The largest clinical trial of anti-retroviral therapy (ART) for people with HIV infection ever run in Africa has found that regular laboratory tests offer little additional clinical benefit to populations when compared to careful clinical monitoring.
The DART study was a controversial one that saw mislead and misleading activists trying to stop a study which outcome could contribute to save many lives.
The study published in The Lancet today concluded that “ART can be delivered safely without routine laboratory monitoring for toxic eff ects, but diff erences in disease progression suggest a …

Why HIV “prevention does not work” has been the subject of recurrent discussions during the past weeks. It all started with a thought-provoking article published online by Frontiers in LA, “a one-stop source of content for Southern California’s LGBT community” (welcome to the Ghetto) by Michael Liberatore who wrote that “if pharmaceutical companies were supplying the cash to develop [HIV/AIDS] treatments, couldn’t they just as easily stall the development of newer, less profit-friendly treatments to assure that their bank accounts continue to swell?”
The article is worth reading and raises some …

Access to life saving medicines is once more at the heart of trade negotiations between Thailand and the US. And again the US administration and businesses have chosen to bully the Thai government in advance of a meeting in Washington prior to the release of the that impacts on trade conditions between the US and its partners.
Compulsory licensing (CL) has been the casus beli of an ongoing battle started when the junta government led by Surayud Chulanont issued compulsory licences for antiretrovirals and anti-cancer drugs in September 2006 in …