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US Health Authorities Call for Wider AIDS-Prevention Drug Use

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US health authorities announced new recommendations Wednesday for people at risk of contracting HIV to take a daily AIDS prevention pill in an effort to limit the spread of one of the deadliest infections in recent decades.

MOSCOW, MAY 15 (RIA Novosti) – US health authorities announced new recommendations Wednesday for people at risk of contracting HIV to take a daily AIDS prevention pill in an effort to limit the spread of one of the deadliest infections in recent decades.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the US Public Health Service posted guidelines that instruct healthcare workers to offer the pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP, pill to patients "at substantial risk for HIV."

The risk group involves those in an ongoing relationship – homosexual or heterosexual – with an HIV-positive partner, and people taking illicit drugs. The pill may also help prevent infecting the future child of a person with AIDS during conception and pregnancy.

The drug only works as a preventative measure, whereas another, post-exposure pill called PEP can be taken after sexual interaction or needle-sharing with an infected person.

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved PrEP in 2012. It is based on another drug, Truvada, which has been used to treat HIV-infected patients for a decade, and has the potential to prevent hundreds of thousands of new HIV cases if taken consistently.

The recommendations are based on clinical trials in which different groups of people received either the PrEP pill or a placebo. The study showed that PrEP reduced the risk of infection by up to 92 percent among gay and bisexual men and nearly the same in HIV discordant couples, by 62 percent among heterosexual men and women, and by 49 percent among injection drug users, according to the CDC.

Although PrEP can be used as a stand-alone measure, health professionals say it is more effective when combined with other prevention tools, such as condoms.

HIV infects 50,000 people in the US every year, and more than 15,000 died from AIDS in 2010.

Some 34 million people are currently living with what is the sixth deadliest disease in the world, accounting for more than three percent of all deaths, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

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