"This is the first thing I've seen at this point that I think really could have
a prevention impact," said Thomas Folks, head of the HIV research lab at the
US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "If it works, it could be distributed
quickly and could blunt the epidemic."
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 human tests
around the world.
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.
If larger tests show the drugs to be as effective on humans, they could be
given to people at highest risk of HIV.
Condoms and counselling alone have not been enough - HIV spreads to 10 people
every minute, five million every year. A vaccine remains the best hope but none
is in sight.
Matthew Bell, a 32-year-old hotel manager in San Francisco who has volunteered
for a safety study on one of the drugs, said he would welcome taking a drug
as an added precaution to practising safe sex.
"As much as I want to make the right choices all of the time, that's not the
reality of it," he said of practising safe sex. "If I thought there was a fallback
parachute, a preventative, I would definitely want to add that.
