Post-exposure HIV drugs won't boost risky behavior

[via Reuters]

Giving antiretroviral drugs to people after they may have been exposed to HIV is an effective way to prevent them from contracting the virus, a new study shows.

What's more, people who know this option is available to them don't appear to be more likely to engage in risky behavior, Dr. Steve Shoptaw of the UCLA Department of Family Medicine in Los Angeles, who was involved in the research, told Reuters Health. "This is a viable way of helping people stay (HIV)-negative," he said.

So-called post-exposure prophylaxis, or PEP, has long been available to people who risk HIV infection on the job, for example a health care worker accidentally jabbed by a contaminated syringe. In 2005, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention expanded its PEP guidelines to cover people exposed to HIV outside the workplace, for example through risky sex, condom breakage or drug use. But PEP still isn't widely used in such cases, Shoptaw and his team note, because it isn't covered by health insurance and is only very rarely offered as part of community health programs.

Read the rest.