ARVs for HIV-negative people may be option

INLSA

HANDFUL: Many HIV-positive people are living on a cocktail of ARVs to keep them healthy. For their HIV-negative partners, one study shows that if you have an HIV-positive partner, taking ARVs lessens the likelihood of your being infected. Picture: Matthew Jordaan

Kerry Sheridan

VARIOUS trials examining the use of anti-retroviral drugs to prevent HIV among healthy heterosexuals have shown drastically different results, published research showed this week.

The findings of three major studies in Africa, in the New England Journal of Medicine, raise many questions about which groups would be likely to benefit and how to manage such treatments in the future, doctors said.

The approach is known as pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP, in which healthy people take antiretroviral drugs – the kind used to treat people with HIV – in order to prevent getting the virus during sex with HIV-infected partners.

A study showed how heterosexual couples – each with one HIV-positive partner – reduced the risk of getting HIV by 67 to 75 percent among the uninfected partners by taking the drugs.

The study, known as Partners PrEP, ran from 2008 to 2010 in Kenya and Uganda and included more than 4 700 couples.

WHICH ONE? HIV-positive patients and their negative partners may both benefit from ARVs. Picture: Zanele Zulu

Ex-QDMS

It randomly assigned the HIV-negative partners to once-daily tenofovir, a combination of tenofovir-emtricitabine, or a placebo.

Both treatments showed “significant” and a “similar magnitude” of protection for both men and women, the study said.

Adherence to the drug regimen was also high in this study, with 82 percent of samples from randomly selected participants showing detectable drug levels.

The study’s authors estimated an overall 92 percent adherence rate. Another study detailed in the journal was stopped early in April last year because the group receiving the drug did not show any better level of protection than the group taking the sugar pill.

That study, known as FEM-PrEP, was a randomised trial of 2 120 women in Kenya, SA and Tanzania.

Thirty-three women taking the drug became infected with HIV, compared to 35 taking the placebo.

The study also showed a much lower rate of adherence to the medication regimen (40 percent).

There was also a much higher rate of reported side effects such as nausea, vomiting and kidney or liver abnormalities.

Since many of the women in the study reported viewing themselves at low-risk for acquiring HIV, this may have contributed to their failure to take the drug regularly, the study authors said.

A third study, called TDF-2, enrolled 1 219 men and women in Botswana.

It showed that pre-exposure prophylaxis had an efficacy rate of about 62 percent in sexually active heterosexual adults.

Previous studies, on men who have sex with men, have shown that the approach could reduce transmission of HIV by 44 percent overall, though much higher success rates were seen in men who took the pills most regularly.

“Why the results differ across the various studies reported to date is unclear,” said an accompanying editorial by Myron Cohen from the University of North Carolina and Lindsey Baden of Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.

Learning more through future study is important because PrEP is increasingly being seen as a part of an integrated HIV prevention approach, they wrote.

Also, an advisory panel to the US Food and Drug Administration earlier this year recommended approving the first-ever pill for HIV prevention. A decision is expected in September.

Doctors need to consider how to manage such an approach with patients, the authors said.

Questions to consider include which populations are best suited, when to start and stop treatment, how to avoid the risk of drug resistance, what long-term side effects may include, and how to make sure the treatment does not encourage risky behaviour such as unprotected sex.

“Concern about the management of pre-exposure prophylaxis of HIV infection should not detract from the potential importance of the intervention,” Cohen and Baden wrote.

“The health care provider who recommends pre-exposure prophylaxis needs a management plan that recognises the effects of the intervention on the patient’s sexual behaviour, safety and well-being as well as the ramifications of the intervention for the health of the public.” – Sapa-AFP