…administered intramuscularly, as an injection in the gluteus muscle, which can admittedly be a little painful. In the clinical trials, 90% of patients preferred the monthly injection compared to taking pills every day. An injection every two months only makes it better.
But what about long-acting HIV medicines for HIV prevention? I’ve written a lot about Pre-exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP), or the use of HIV medicines to protect against getting HIV infection. Fewer drugs are necessary to prevent HIV than to treat it. The two products that are currently approved in the US are combination pills taken daily, Truvada (Tenofovir + emtricitibine) and Descovy (tenofovir alafenamide + emtricitabine).
To study the effectiveness of long-acting injectable PrEP, two large studies were launched with one targeting predominantly gay men and another targeting African women. Injectable Cabotegravir as a single agent injected once every two months was compared with Truvada taken as one pill daily. The study in men released early results in mid-May, which recruited 4,750 men from different countries in Latin America, Southeast Asia, South Africa and the United States. Approximately half of those enrolled in the study in the U.S. were African American.
The protection provided from daily Truvada was impressive with a rate of 1.2 percent of study participants getting infected. However, in the subjects who received the Cabotegravir, the infection rate was only 0.38 percent. Investigations are underway to determine the causes of why some people got infected while others didn’t.