Cape Town, South Africa — Injections are used twice a year to treat AIDS were 100% effective in preventing new infections in women, according to the results of a study published Wednesday.
There were no infections among young women and girls who received the vaccines in a study of about 5,000 In South Africa and Uganda, the researchers reported. In a group given daily preventive pills, about 2% ended up contracting HIV from infected sexual partners.
“Seeing this level of protection is surprising,” Salim Abdool Karim said of the shots. He is director of an AIDS research center in Durban, South Africa, and was not part of the research.
The shots fired by The American pharmaceutical company Gilead and sold as Sunlenca are approved in the US, Canada, Europe and elsewhere, but only as a treatment for HIV. The company said it is waiting for results from testing in men before seeking permission to use it to protect against infection.
The results in women were published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine and discussed at an AIDS conference in Munich. Gilead paid for the study and some of the researchers are employees of the company. Due to the surprisingly encouraging results, the study was stopped early and all participants were offered the injections, also known as lenacapavir.
while there is Other ways to prevent HIV infection., like condoms or daily pills, constant use has been a problem in Africa. In the new study, only about 30% of participants who received Gilead’s Truvada or Descovy preventive pills actually took them, and that number decreased over time.
The prospect of receiving a vaccine twice a year is “pretty revolutionary news” for our patients, said Thandeka Nkosi, who helped lead Gilead’s research at the Desmond Tutu Health Foundation in Masiphumelele, South Africa. “It gives participants a choice and just removes all the stigma around taking pills” to prevent HIV.
Experts working for stop the spread of AIDS They are excited about Sunlenca injections, but are concerned that Gilead has not yet agreed on an affordable price for those who need them most. The company said it would implement a “voluntary licensing program,” suggesting that only a select number of generic producers would be allowed to manufacture them.
“Gilead has a tool that could change the trajectory of the HIV epidemic,” he said. Winnie Byanyimaexecutive director of the UN AIDS agency, based in Geneva.
He said his organization urged Gilead to share Sunlenca’s patent with a U.N.-backed program that negotiates broad contracts that allow generic drug makers to make cheap versions of medicines for the poorest countries in the world. As an HIV treatment, the drug costs more than $40,000 a year in the United States, although what people pay varies.
Dr. Helen Bygrave of Doctors Without Borders said in a statement that the shots could “reverse the epidemic if they are available in countries with the highest rate of new infections.” She urged Gilead to publish a price for Sunlenca that was affordable for all countries.
In a statement last month, Gilead said it was too early to say how much Sunlenca would cost for prevention in poorer countries. Dr. Jared Baeten, Gilead’s senior vice president of clinical development, said the company was already talking to generic makers and understood how “deeply important it is that we move forward at speed.”
Another HIV prevention vaccine, Apretude, given every two months, is approved in some countries, including in Africa. It sells for about $180 per patient per year, which is still too expensive for most developing countries.
Byanyima said the people most in need of lasting protection include women and girls who are victims of domestic violence and gay men in countries where same-sex relationships are criminalized. According to UNAIDS, 46% of new HIV infections globally in 2022 were among women and girls, who were three times more likely to contract HIV than men in Africa.
Byanyima compared the news about Sunlenca to the discovery decades ago of anti-AIDS drugs that could turn HIV infection from a death sentence to a chronic illness. At the time, South African President Nelson Mandela suspended patents to allow broader access to medicines; The price subsequently dropped from about $10,000 per patient per year to about $50.
Olwethu Kemele, a health worker at the Desmond Tutu Health Foundation, predicted the injections could increase the number of people coming for HIV prevention and curb the spread of the virus. He said young women often hide the pills to avoid questions from their boyfriends and family. “The girls find it difficult to continue,” he said.
In a report on the state of the global epidemic released this week, UNAIDS said that fewer people were infected with HIV in 2023 than at any time since the late 1980s. Globally, HIV infects around 1. 3 million people each year and kills more than 600,000, mainly in Africa. While significant progress has been made in Africa, HIV infections are increasing in Eastern Europe, Latin America and the Middle East.
In other research presented at the AIDS conference, Andrew Hill of the University of Liverpool and his colleagues estimated that once production of Sunlenca is scaled up to treat 10 million people, the price should fall to about $40. per treatment. He said it was vital that health authorities had access to Sunlenca as soon as possible.
“This is the closest you can get to an HIV vaccine,” he said.
___
Cheng reported from London.
___
The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
This story originally appeared on ABCNews.go.com read the full story
