HIV Prevention News Around The Globe
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Preexposure prophylaxis use increased in recent years Preexposure prophylaxis (PrEP) use increased between 2013 and 2023, according to a research letter published online Oct. 14 in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Laura M. Mann, Ph.D., M.P.H., from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, and colleagues used the IQVIA Real-World Longitudinal Prescription Data database (2013 to 2023) to examine trends in PrEP medication prescriptions in the United States. The researchers found that a cumulative 1.1 million persons were prescribed oral or injectable PrEP during the study period; 88.6 percent were men. There was an increase in the annual number of PrEP users from 10,281 in 2013 to 505,730 in 2023. From January 2013 to September 2019, the monthly use of branded tenofovir disoproxil fumarate/emtricitabine (TDF/FTC) increased but decreased after the generic became available. Generic TDF/FTC reached the highest monthly share of users among all medications from December 2021 to December 2023. Oral PrEP accounted for a cumulative 99 percent of persons prescribed PrEP from 2013 to 2023. Following injectable cabotegravir availability in 2022, prescriptions increased from 1.1 percent in 2022 to 2.5 percent in 2023. "New PrEP medications are heavily marketed, yet, generic PrEP dominated the market despite the availability of three branded medications," the authors write. "This could be attributed to a 2021 federal guidance directing insurers to cover the cost of generic PrEP medication without patient cost-sharing, suggesting that effective health policy can result in lower health care expenditures." Read more here. |
Affordability and supply remain critical to the success of long-lasting HIV drug Affordability and mass distribution will be critical to the success of a long-lasting injectable HIV prevention drug that has proven highly effective in human trials, say global health specialists. US pharma company Gilead Sciences is seeking regulatory approval for the drug lenacapavir in a number of African countries – a key step towards making it available across the region, where almost one in 25 people live with HIV. Lenacapavir is a long-acting pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) product, a treatment that works by stopping HIV from getting into the body and making copies of itself. Unlike oral PrEP treatments, which are taken daily, the drug is administered at six-month intervals and is the longest acting injectable produced to date. In a late-stage trial, lenacapavir reduced HIV infection by 96 per cent among diverse groups, including men who have sex with men and transgender and non-binary people. Only two out of more than 2,000 people involved in the PURPOSE 2 study went on to contract HIV, according to data released at the International AIDS Society’s HIV Research for Prevention Conference in Lima, Peru earlier this month. The findings build on the earlier PURPOSE 1 study, where no cisgender women – those who identify with the gender they were born with – contracted HIV while on the drug. Hasina Subedar, senior technical advisor at South Africa’s Department of Health, says the real-world impact of lenacapavir will depend on the drug’s pricing and availability. “If it’s affordable, lenacapavir could significantly reduce new infections here,” she told SciDev.Net. Read more on the available options here |
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New antibody platform targets evolving viruses Scientists at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, in collaboration with colleagues in the field, have developed an innovative antibody platform aimed at tackling one of the greatest challenges in treating rapidly evolving viruses like SARS-CoV-2: their ability to mutate and evade existing vaccines and therapies. Their findings, including preclinical studies in mice, introduce the Adaptive Multi-Epitope Targeting and Avidity-Enhanced (AMETA) Nanobody Platform, a new antibody approach for addressing how viruses like SARS-CoV-2, which causes COVID-19, evolve to evade vaccines and treatments. Details on the results were published October 23 in the journal Cell https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(24)01143-7 [DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2024.09.043]. Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, SARS-CoV-2 has quickly mutated, making many vaccines and treatments less effective. To combat this, Yi Shi, PhD, and his team at Icahn Mount Sinai created AMETA, a versatile platform that uses engineered nanobodies to simultaneously target multiple stable regions of the virus that are less likely to mutate. This multi-targeting strategy, paired with a significant boost in binding strength, provides a more durable and resilient defense against evolving viruses, say the researchers. Read more insights from here |
Groups With Highest Unmet Need for PrEP Highlighted in Analysis Use of preexposure prophylaxis (PrEP) to prevent HIV is increasing overall, but both the rate of increase for starting PrEP and the rate of unmet need differ widely by demographic group, according to new data from a large study. An analysis by Li Tao, MD, MS, PhD, director of real-world evidence at Gilead Sciences, and colleagues looked at statistical trends from 2019 to 2023 and found that Black, Hispanic, and Medicaid-insured populations continue to lack equitable access to PrEP. Among the findings were that most new PrEP users were men with HIV risk factors who are commercially insured and live in predominantly non-Hispanic White areas (53% in 2019 and 43% in 2023). For comparison, men living in predominantly Black or Hispanic neighborhoods, or who are insured by Medicaid, saw lower proportions of PrEP use (16% in 2019 and 17% in 2023) despite higher annual increases in PrEP use (11% per year) and higher unmet needs. Read more on the analysis here |
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