We Can Prevent HIV Infection At 100% Efficacy...But Not Afford It?!?
The nightmare of modern pharmaceutical pricing.
Gilead Pharmaceuticals made a remarkable drug called Lenacapavir. It's injected twice a year. With that twice-a-year shot, the rate of HIV transmission dropped to zero in those treated.1
This was done in Uganda and South Africa:
On June 20, 2024, Gilead Sciences reported the results of a double-blind, randomized, phase 3 PURPOSE 1 trial aimed at evaluating the safety and efficacy of twice-yearly, subcutaneous LEN for PrEP. In this trial, more than 5,300 cisgender women and adolescent girls aged 16–25 across 25 sites in South Africa and three sites in Uganda were enrolled and randomly assigned to receive twice-yearly subcutaneous LEN (n = 2,134), once-daily oral Descovy (n = 2,136), and once-daily oral Truvada (n = 1,068), and the trial used background HIV incidence (bHIV) as the primary comparator and Truvada as a secondary comparator.
As a testament to ethical trial design, we will note that only active agents exist in this trial. How did this new, easy-to-administer medicine perform? …