Canadian Pharmacy Helps Prevent HIV Infection

U.S. Food and Drug Administration advisers suggested to buy Truvada as a way to prevent HIV infection among healthy individuals with increased threat of getting the AIDS-causing virus. 

"I don't see it as a panacea, but it's an option, and that's important," said Dr. Kenneth Mayer, an AIDS specialist and medical research director of The Fenway Institute at Fenway Health in Boston. "Some people won't use a condom, but will say, 'if you give me another option, I'll use that.'" 

Mayer explained, "Someone who is not yet infected but is exposed to HIV, the drug may prevent the virus from reproducing even if it has already invaded cells. As a result, the virus cannot start turning the newly exposed person's body into a 'factory' to produce more HIV particles." 

"Why would you take this medication if you intended to use condoms?" asked the group's president, Michael Weinstein, in an interview with Bloomberg News. He used a sartorial metaphor to elaborate how unlikely that might be: "You've got to be really paranoid about your pants falling down to wear a belt and suspenders." 

David Paltiel, a professor at Yale University School of Medicine, said his research has shown that the use of preventive drug treatments should reduce the risk of infection overall. Still, he said, "it’s unknown if people (would) take more chances because they feel protected by a 'chemical condom." Nevertheless, prevention is better than cure with generic Truvada. 

"Potential markets for Truvada as a preventive drug include gay men who have sex with more than one man and any committed couple in which one person is HIV-positive, including some heterosexual couples who want to have children," Mayer said. 

Mayer added, "Allowing the marketing will probably lead to an increase in its usage for prevention. But, this is not a one-time, end-of-the-problem approach like a shot of penicillin to treat an infection like syphilis. Also, it involves someone perceiving that he or she is at risk, or a provider being comfortable enough to ask about a person's risk. We know that a lot of health providers don't like to talk to their patients about sex." 

Paltiel said, "My research came to the same conclusion: That widespread use of the drug in high-risk people would be "as cost-effective as other widely accepted public health and medical interventions." As such, Canadian pharmacy will support approved drugs for the well-being of the public. 

Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is a lentivirus (a member of the retrovirus family) that causes acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), a condition in humans in which progressive failure of the immune system allows life-threatening opportunistic infections and cancers to thrive. Infection with HIV occurs by the transfer of blood, semen, vaginal fluid, pre-ejaculate, or breast milk. Within these bodily fluids, HIV is present as both free virus particles and virus within infected immune cells. The four major routes of transmission are unsafe sex, contaminated needles, breast milk, and transmission from an infected mother to her baby at birth (perinatal transmission). Screening of blood products for HIV has largely eliminated transmission through blood transfusions or infected blood products in the developed world.