The Daily Populous Wednesday March 12nd, 2025 morning edition
Authored by bbc.com and submitted by AudibleNod

Annual jab for HIV protection passes trial hurdle

14 hours ago Share Save Michelle Roberts Digital health editor, BBC News Share Save

An annual injection designed to guard against Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) has completed an important early safety trial, researchers report in The Lancet medical journal. Lenacapavir stops the virus from replicating inside cells. If future trials go well - now it has passed the first, Phase I, testing hurdle - it could become the longest-acting form of HIV prevention available. Currently, people can take daily pills or sometimes have injections every eight weeks, for pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), to reduce their risk.

PrEP tablets are highly effective but taking them every day can be difficult.

About 39.9 million people are living with HIV, 65% of them in the World Health Organization African Region, according to the most recent figures, for 2023. And the WHO, Global Fund and Joint United Nations Programme on HIV and Aids (UNAids) are all working on strategies to end the HIV epidemic by 2030, which include improving access to medicines such as PrEP.

For the trial, 40 people without HIV were injected into the muscle with lenacapavir, with no major side effects or safety concerns. And after 56 weeks, the medicine was still detectable in their bodies. Future trials must include more diverse participants, the researchers told the 2025 Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections. But they added: "Yearly dosing of lenacapavir has the potential to further decrease current barriers to PrEP by increasing the uptake of, persistence on, and, therefore, scalability of PrEP."

Lopsided-Ad-3869 on March 11st, 2025 at 20:32 UTC »

Shout out to all the nurses at Ward 5B for the people dying of AIDS, and all the dykes who helped them take back their dignity, when the government and the churches do what they do best to marginalized people.

Allronix1 on March 11st, 2025 at 19:59 UTC »

Raise a glass for all those who died too soon from this illness

(because irony of ironies, Queen is playing on my radio right now)

And raise another to the hope no one else will have to die from it.

bizoticallyyours83 on March 11st, 2025 at 19:55 UTC »

Wow that's great!