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Old 04-01-2006, 06:45 AM   #1 (permalink)
itch vaccine
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Scientists closing in on AIDS Prevention Pill - Good or Bad?

Well it seemed like a really good idea to have an AIDS prevention pill at first, but after some reading on different websites, 2 issues were concerned about the discovery of a prevention pill :

1. There would be less safer sex (or more dangerous sex).
2. Resistance may develope, resulting in a more dangerous virulent strain.

And it's really really expensive.

But I think, all new discoveries are on the average, good stuff. If we wanted this discovery to be good, we can make it so.

Anyway, I was looking around for a short clipping on the story, but was unable to find a website that would give me short "news". So I'll just quote some interesting bits.

From : http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12039614/page/1

Quote:
ATLANTA - Twenty-five years after the first AIDS cases jolted the world, scientists think they soon may have a pill that people could take to keep from getting the virus that causes the global killer.

Two drugs already used to treat HIV infection have shown such promise at preventing it in monkeys that officials last week said they would expand early tests in healthy high-risk men and women around the world.
Quote:
"As much as I want to make the right choices all of the time, that's not the reality of it," he said of practicing safe sex. "If I thought there was a fallback parachute, a preventative, I would definitely want to add that."

Some fear that this could make things worse.

"I've had people make comments to me, 'Aren't you just making the world safer for unsafe sex?'" said Dr. Lynn Paxton, team leader for the project at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Quote:
The drugs are tenofovir (Viread) and emtricitabine, or FTC (Emtriva), sold in combination as Truvada by Gilead Sciences Inc., a California company best known for inventing Tamiflu, a drug showing promise against bird flu.

Unlike vaccines, which work through the immune system — the very thing HIV destroys — AIDS drugs simply keep the virus from reproducing. They already are used to prevent infection in health care workers accidentally exposed to HIV, and in babies whose pregnant mothers receive them.

Taking them daily or weekly before exposure to the virus — the time frame isn't known yet — may keep it from taking hold, just as taking malaria drugs in advance can prevent that disease when someone is bitten by an infected mosquito, scientists believe.

Monkeys suggest they are right.

Specifically, six macaques were given the drugs and then challenged with a deadly combination of monkey and human AIDS viruses, administered in rectal doses to imitate how the germ spreads in gay men.
Quote:
Monkeys fully protected
Despite 14 weekly blasts of the virus, none of the monkeys became infected. All but one of another group of monkeys that didn't get the drugs did, typically after two exposures.

What happened next, when scientists quit giving the drugs, was equally exciting.

"We wanted to see, was the drug holding the virus down so we didn't detect it," or was it truly preventing infection, said Folks, head of the CDC's HIV research lab. It turned out to be the latter. "We're now four months following the animals with no drug, no virus. They're uninfected and healthy."
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