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Long-Acting Drugs May Revolutionize H.I.V. Prevention and Treatment

A pill taken once a week. A shot administered at home once a month. Even a jab given at a clinic every six months. In the next five to 10 years, these options may be available to prevent or treat H.I.V. Instead of drugs that must be taken daily, scientists are closing in on longer-acting alternatives — perhaps even a future in which H.I.V. may require attention just twice a year, inconceivable in the darkest decades of the epidemic. “This period is the next wave of innovation, newer products meeting the needs of people, particularly in prevention, in ways that we didn’t ever have before,” said Mitchell Warren, executive director of the H.I.V. prevention organization AVAC.

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Articles of Interest

The Drug That Could Revolutionize the Fight Against H.I.V.

World leaders are dismantling global health programs and cutting back foreign aid. Will an extraordinary new medicine be able to outpace the damage?

An HIV-prevention drug is widely available. Yet at-risk women are getting left behind

In the U.S., women account for a fifth of new infections. But a persistent lack of education means few even know about the highly effective medication known as PrEP.

Antiretroviral Medications

From single tablets to injections.

Antiretroviral Medications and Initial Therapy

The availability of highly effective antiretroviral therapy in the mid-1990s transformed HIV from a fatal infection to a manageable, chronic disease. Persons with HIV who take modern combination antiretroviral therapy and maintain virologic suppression significantly reduce their HIV-associated morbidity and mortality, and do not transmit HIV to others.

Antiretroviral Therapy

Antiretroviral therapy (ART) is a combination of medications used to treat HIV (human immunodeficiency virus). It works by stopping HIV from reproducing. It can reduce your levels of HIV and keep your immune system healthy. It’s not a cure, but many people reach undetectable levels of HIV. You take ART as a pill every day or as a shot once every month or two months.

ARVs and children: new research shows the devastating impact of a late start

As access to antiretroviral therapy increases across the globe, children who acquired HIV at the time of their birth or through breastfeeding are living longer. In the early 2000s this was unimaginable.

End to AIDS in sight as huge study finds drugs stop HIV transmission

Paper says risk between male partners is zero if virus fully suppressed by antiretrovirals.

Fifty years of HIV: how close are we to a cure?

Antiretroviral therapy has saved millions of lives by stopping the virus from replicating and allowing the CD4 T cells to recover, keeping the immune system intact. But it cannot eradicate the virus from the body. That’s because when HIV enters its host cell, it sometimes does something highly unusual: it integrates its DNA into that of the cell. At that point, it turns latent, seeding itself in hiding places throughout the body, where it remains inactive and undetectable, immune to antiretrovirals, but creating a reservoir from which it can rebound into full-blown infection without warning.

HIV Drug Therapy Should Be Started as Soon as Possible, Study Shows

Health benefits of starting antiretroviral drugs early outweigh risks.

HIV Treatment

The treatment for HIV is called antiretroviral therapy (ART). ART involves taking a combination of HIV medicines daily, monthly, or every other month. While ART cannot cure HIV, prompt HIV treatment can help all people with HIV live long, healthy lives and reduce the risk of HIV transmission. One of the primary goals of HIV treatment is to reduce a person’s viral load to an undetectable level, which nearly eliminates the risk of transmitting HIV through sexual contact.

HIV treatment has come a long way – but there's still work to do

The introduction of highly active antiretroviral therapy (Haart) in 1996 transformed a terminal disease into a chronic, manageable condition – a bona fide result of teamwork between patients and professionals who shared the common goal of survival. The focus is now on rolling treatment out to those who need it and preventing HIV transmission.

Hope for Multi-drug Resistant HIV

Onyema Ogbuagu, MD, gets excited about finding new ways to treat HIV—and he is very enthusiastic about lenacapavir, an injection recently approved by the FDA for multi-drug resistant HIV for which he was the principal investigator. He is pleased that, throughout his career, he has seen HIV go from a “deadly disease” to a “very easy, manageable disease.”

How a Drugmaker Profited by Slow-Walking a Promising H.I.V. Therapy

Gilead delayed a new version of a drug, allowing it to extend the patent life of a blockbuster line of medications, internal documents show.

New HIV jabs taken two months apart hailed as huge step forward

Safe injectable antiretroviral drugs, approved by health bodies, ‘could lift burden of daily oral therapy’

New HIV Prevention Drug Approved—Now Let’s Remove the Final Barrier

The Food and Drug Administration approved a new injectable drug on June 18 that provides pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) against HIV, requiring individuals to take it only twice a year. By removing barriers to access for adults and adolescents, the FDA makes the drug, lenacapavir (brand name Yetzugo), more widely available—great news for HIV prevention.

The First AIDS Drugs

Faced with the burgeoning HIV/AIDS epidemic in the 1980s, NCI’s intramural program developed the first therapies to effectively treat the disease. These discoveries helped transform a fatal diagnosis to the manageable condition it is for many today.

The Story Behind the First AIDS Drug

Today, if someone is diagnosed with HIV, he or she can choose among 41 drugs that can treat the disease. And there’s a good chance that with the right combination, given at the right time, the drugs can keep HIV levels so low that the person never gets sick.

This drug is the 'breakthrough of the year' — and it could mean the end of the HIV epidemic

The emerging data surrounding lenacapavir is so astonishing that the drug's development has been heralded as the 2024 Breakthrough of the Year by the journal Science, which described it as representing "a pivotal step toward diminishing HIV/AIDS as a global health crisis."

Twenty Years Of Antiretroviral Therapy For People Living With HIV: Global Costs, Health Achievements, Economic Benefits

Since the introduction of azidothymidine in 1987, significant improvements in treatment for people living with HIV have yielded substantial improvements in global health as a result of the unique benefits of antiretroviral therapy (ART).

Resources

10 things you need to know about the pill to prevent HIV

This pill does not spell the end of condoms. Public-health officials are being very careful to avoid suggesting Truvada is an alternative to other forms of protection — especially because it doesn't protect against the full range of sexually transmitted infections people are exposed to during intercourse.

FDA-Approved HIV Medicines

The HIV medicines are grouped into seven drug classes according to how they fight HIV.

HIV Medications

Information and news about FDA-approved antiretrovirals, plus insights into how they're used in treatment regimens.

StatPearls

A typical initial HIV regimen includes 3 HIV medications from a minimum of 2 drug classes. Although this treatment is not curative, it can provide longer lives for patients and reduce HIV transmission. This reduction of transmission has become a popular use of antiretroviral therapy for HIV-positive individuals with an HIV-negative partner. The successes of antiretroviral therapy have reduced HIV to a chronic condition in many parts of the world as progression to AIDS has become rare.