USA Today features Q&A on Truvada's potential as prevention tool

Jun 27 2012

USA Today features a Q&A on Truvada, an antiretroviral drug that a Food and Drug Administration (FDA) panel in May recommended be approved for pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) to prevent HIV among healthy people at risk of contracting the virus. The newspaper includes comments from different experts on the drug, saying implementation and cost are two major hurdles to its use for PrEP. Carlos del Rio, chair of the Emory Department of Global Health at the Rollins School of Public Health, co-director of the Emory Center for AIDS Research, and a board member at HIVMA (the HIV Medicine Association), said that if the drug is approved for use as a prevention tool, "I don't think, honestly, in the short term, this is going to have much impact in the U.S., much less globally. ... It's a tool, but at the current price of up to $14,000 a year per individual, it's simply not possible to think this will have an immediate impact in the epidemic globally," according to the newspaper. The FDA is expected to make a decision later this summer, USA Today notes (Manning, 6/25).