Subscribe
Hellobeautiful Featured Video
CLOSE

Would you take one or two pills daily for the rest of your life to ensure you’d never catch HIV?  Seems like a development to make sex workers rejoice, but is this even reasonable for the rest of us? According to a 2009 UNAIDS published report, there are approximately 33.3 million people living with HIV/AIDS. One million of those people live in the United States.

When you consider that major cities have higher population concentrations—depending on where you live, it’s likely you interact with people living with HIV/AIDS on a daily basis. What those interactions become depend entirely on your lifestyle, so—are you gonna take those pills?

Two studies released yesterday add to the growing body of evidence that taking a daily pill containing one or two AIDS drugs can keep an uninfected person from catching HIV.

The studies were the first to show protection in heterosexuals; the only earlier one with similarly encouraging results involved gay men.

As it becomes clearer that antiretroviral drugs can not only treat the disease but prevent it, pressure is likely to increase on donors to find more money to supply the drugs in African nations ravaged by HIV and on pharmaceutical manufacturers to either sell them cheaply worldwide or release their patents to companies that can.

“This is an extremely exciting day for HIV prevention,’’ said Dr. Kevin Fenton, director of AIDS prevention at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

One study released yesterday, known as Partners PrEP and conducted in Kenya and Uganda by researchers from the University of Washington, showed that participants who took a daily Truvada pill – a mix of tenofovir and emtricitabine – had a 73 percent lower chance of getting infected. The study was done in 4,758 “discordant couples,’’ those in which one partner was infected and the other was not. Partners who took a Viread pill – which contains only tenofovir – had a 62 percent lower chance.

The second study, called TDF2 and done in Botswana by the CDC, found that those taking Truvada had a 63 percent lower chance of infection. The subjects were 1,200 young adults. [SOURCE]

GET MORE HERE

6 Secret Sources Of Sugar You Should Stay Away From

You’re Fit! Now What? How to Maintain Your Weight Loss

For 2024’s iteration of MadameNoire and HelloBeautiful’s annual series Women to Know, we knew we wanted to celebrate the people who help make the joys of film and television possible. To create art is to create magic. This year, we spotlight Hollywood Executive’s changing the face of cinema.