What would you do if there were a pill that could prevent HIV infection? Would you throw your rubbers out the window? Would you feel safer?Maybe it was a condom that broke — Daniel doesn't like to talk about the details. "It was just a stupid accident, and not even something usually considered too risky." But it's how he went from loving a man with HIV, to living with HIV himself.
But what if taking a pill a day could have reduced his risk of infection? "We had years of practice playing safe, so that might have seemed like overkill," says Daniel. "But looking back now, I think it would have been nice to have that option."
Long-term serodiscordant couples — where one partner is HIV-negative, the other positive — are just one of the potential candidates for a new HIV prevention technology under development called pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP.
The theory behind PrEP is that some of the same drugs that people with HIV use to manage their infection may also be capable of preventing the virus from taking hold in someone's body in the first place. A study published on Jan 15 showed that PrEP prevented HIV transmission in mice. And human safety trials are underway, including one involving 4,000 gay men in Lima, Peru.
"We are still years away from knowing whether PrEP will be a safe and effective option for people," says Jim Pickett, who heads advocacy efforts at the AIDS Foundation of Chicago and calls himself "an ardent supporter of new prevention technologies." But he's optimistic about PrEP because the results are encouraging so far.
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