Man Contracts HIV While On PrEP Drug Truvada Confirming Site's Previous Claims

February 27. 2016

Truvada

This is a follow up to the November 18, 2015 Judiciary Report article "Charlie Sheen's Porn Star Ex-Girlfriends State He Did Not Tell Them He Is HIV" and "Charlie Sheen And His Doctor Painted A Misleading Picture On TV About HIV And AIDS Which Can Create More Infections" and the November 19, 2015 article "Charlie Sheen's Nurse Had Unprotected Sex With Him For Months" where the site explicitly warned against trusting the PrEP antiviral HIV pharmaceutical drug Truvada, as a 100% guaranteed method of preventing the spread of HIV.

4-months later it has been announced (yesterday) that a 43-year-old gay man has become the first person to contract HIV while on Truvada. Many men in the gay community have been actively using Truvada and engaging in very promiscuous sexual behavior, believing the pharmaceutical drug would completely protect them from contracting HIV. Heterosexuals have also been using Truvada and engaging in promiscuity, believing they were completely protected as well.

While the drug has proven useful, it is not an impenetrable shield between the public and HIV. Truvada was not meant to be used as a facilitator of reckless sexual behavior. Gilead, the manufacturer of the drug, does repeatedly warn it is not a failsafe method of HIV prevention. Therefore, they can't be sued in said transmission case, as the disclosure statements provided to a number of drug regulation agencies and drug database websites, as well as what is stated on the Truvada website, clearly makes consumers aware of the dangers ("safer sex").

People cannot afford to take their sexual health lightly. What I strongly dislike is the amount of celebrities out there posting items on social networking containing the most promiscuous behavior, bragging to their impressionable audiences about debauchery. They are helping by example, to spread HIV and AIDS via this irresponsible conduct.

I was reading an article on a website, only to see a side link to another article about 34-year-old promiscuous poker player, Dan Bilzerian, posting a picture of an orgy he threw. The picture was disgraceful and encouraging the nearly 16 million people following him on Instagram, to seek out reckless, meaningless sexual conduct that will put them at risk of contracting HIV. Bilzerian and those in his sexual circle are headed for disaster with what they are doing.

A Man Has Contracted HIV While on PrEP. What This Means—and Doesn’t—for the Future of HIV Prevention.

PrEP Is Not Magic—and Treating It That Way Undermines Its Incredible Power. It’s been a confusing week with regard to PrEP—an HIV-prevention strategy which currently consists of taking a daily pill (Truvada) to prevent infection if one is exposed to the virus.

At a major conference for HIV research—the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections—the CDC revealed that, if deployed widely alongside pushes for more HIV testing and treatment, PrEP has the potential to help reduce new infections in the U.S. by 70 percent, preventing an estimated 185,000 new cases by 2020.

Specifically, suppressing the virus to “undetectable”—and therefore essentially nontransmissible—levels in HIV-positive people could prevent 168,000 infections, while an expansion of access to PrEP to negative individuals could forestall 17,000 new cases.

Those numbers add to the promise of PrEP, which has been shown to be 99 percent effective at preventing HIV transmission if taken daily as directed. But of course, that statistic leaves a 1 percent chance of infection open—and, unfortunately, an instance of that 1 percent also showed up at the conference.

David C. Knox, a physican and researcher from Toronto, presented a case study of a patient who, according to the doctor, represents “the first reported case of breakthrough HIV infection with evidence of long-term adherence to PrEP.” The patient, a 43-year-old man, had been on PrEP for about two years (testing negative for HIV seven times as part of the regular checkups required for the regimen) when he seroconverted.

Importantly, pharmacy records and further medical investigations confirmed his claim that he had been taking the medication as prescribed. (Cases of infection in PrEP patients who had not kept up with the daily pill have been reported; this is the first time an apparently compliant individual has seroconverted.).

The patient reported multiple instances of anal sex without condoms in the period before testing positive. While PrEP’s protection rates are actually higher than those for condoms, it is currently recommended that individuals on the program continue to use them, as condoms help protect against other STIs and enhance coverage for HIV.

To the scientific community, this is an intriguing—though rare—case of HIV multi-drug resistance. The patient’s particular viral pool showed varying levels of resistance to a host of drugs, including those that make up Truvada—though he is now on a customized regimen rendering him undetectable.

In the presentation (which is streamable online), Knox suggested that the patient was likely infected by an HIV-positive partner whose own treatment on the drug cocktail Stribild was “failing,” or losing efficacy, as sometimes happens for various reasons over the long term.

It’s important to note that the resistance of this particular instance of the virus is extremely uncommon. Speaking to Betablog, Dr. Robert Grant, a noted HIV/AIDS researcher, provided some helpful context... 

http://www.slate.com

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