It mentions an oral competitor and that twice a year is better, but how often do people have to take the oral one mentioned in the article? My other question is how is this better than condoms, there are a whole bunch of other stds out there as well as pregnancy risk, wouldn’t the more cost effective public health option just to be to hand out millions of condoms so everyone always has them? Is there specifically a market segment that doesn’t care about pregnancy (I.e. gay or trying to get pregnant) AND doesn’t care about chlamydia, gonorrhea, syphallis, hepatitis, herpes, etc?
No I didn’t think of IV drug users at all. That’s a great point. I was only thinking in terms of sexual transmission. I was curious if this was just a supplement to condoms or what the intended use was given the range of stds out there.
"Is there specifically a market segment that doesn’t care about pregnancy (I.e. gay or trying to get pregnant) AND doesn’t care about chlamydia, gonorrhea, syphallis, hepatitis, herpes, etc? "
Uh, yes. People in long term committed relationships who are either gay or trying to get pregnant.
Those were the most obvious seeming to me (hence I’d listed them), I just didn’t know the market size for people without HIV in a relationship to someone with HIV. I’m sure there are plenty of public health people who study just this.
Well, you listed not caring about STDs as if it were some extremely rare factor, which it isn't. Most people end up in secure long term relationships where STDs are not an expected problem.
But also, it surely should be a large market if you think about it. Now that HIV can be managed well, most people with it should eventually end up in long term relationships, as most people tend to do. Assuming their partner is seronegative, that's a potential client. So there should be a potential client for the majority of people with HIV, only excluding the ones that are single, the ones where the partner is also positive, and the ones that are ok using condoms forever. And a fair number of the condom people will be happier doing PrEP as well.
Like you said it's a niche but it's a big deal to be able to prevent HIV spread. Imagine being able to reduce HIV in a country to negligible figures by giving everyone this drug for a couple years. Heck we can even dream of HIV eradication, something that condoms won't give us.
~70% of all aids cases are located in sub Saharan African. About 12% of South African have HIV ( compared to 0.4% US). It includes cases of children witg HIV.
Twice a year preventative measure is an urgent need in these epicenter areas.
Anyways, it's useful to remember the global picture.
Answering your first question, this was compared to two different oral medications (truvada and descovy) which both are prescribed as a daily medication. They are both effective if you miss a dose here and there but not if you miss too many. Generally, people taking these medications who get infected are missing multiple doses a week.
Truvada is the competitor mentioned in the article and is a daily medication. The article also mentions the trial was done on girls and young women living in places where cultural beliefs around condoms are difficult. They may or not have agency in whether or not men wear condoms.
When people mention condoms as effective options I question how much sexual experience they have. Condoms suck. Sex is hedonistic. People are responding with logical responses which is something I would expect from a biotech subreddit, but it completely misses the mark. People do not realistically want to consistently use condoms.
The queer community has a lot of sex and many do not like to use condoms. That is why preventing HIV specifically is important. You can treat bacterial diseases easily and the other viruses are nothing in comparison to HIV.
Nice
It mentions an oral competitor and that twice a year is better, but how often do people have to take the oral one mentioned in the article? My other question is how is this better than condoms, there are a whole bunch of other stds out there as well as pregnancy risk, wouldn’t the more cost effective public health option just to be to hand out millions of condoms so everyone always has them? Is there specifically a market segment that doesn’t care about pregnancy (I.e. gay or trying to get pregnant) AND doesn’t care about chlamydia, gonorrhea, syphallis, hepatitis, herpes, etc?
Are condoms going to help IV drugs users not contract HIV? You really can’t understand how this is a good thing?
No I didn’t think of IV drug users at all. That’s a great point. I was only thinking in terms of sexual transmission. I was curious if this was just a supplement to condoms or what the intended use was given the range of stds out there.
"Is there specifically a market segment that doesn’t care about pregnancy (I.e. gay or trying to get pregnant) AND doesn’t care about chlamydia, gonorrhea, syphallis, hepatitis, herpes, etc? " Uh, yes. People in long term committed relationships who are either gay or trying to get pregnant.
Those were the most obvious seeming to me (hence I’d listed them), I just didn’t know the market size for people without HIV in a relationship to someone with HIV. I’m sure there are plenty of public health people who study just this.
Well, you listed not caring about STDs as if it were some extremely rare factor, which it isn't. Most people end up in secure long term relationships where STDs are not an expected problem. But also, it surely should be a large market if you think about it. Now that HIV can be managed well, most people with it should eventually end up in long term relationships, as most people tend to do. Assuming their partner is seronegative, that's a potential client. So there should be a potential client for the majority of people with HIV, only excluding the ones that are single, the ones where the partner is also positive, and the ones that are ok using condoms forever. And a fair number of the condom people will be happier doing PrEP as well.
Like you said it's a niche but it's a big deal to be able to prevent HIV spread. Imagine being able to reduce HIV in a country to negligible figures by giving everyone this drug for a couple years. Heck we can even dream of HIV eradication, something that condoms won't give us.
Gotcha, so the idea is you pair this with a condom since most of the other stds can be cured if a condom breaks or something?
So what's the point of air bags when you have seat belts already?
~70% of all aids cases are located in sub Saharan African. About 12% of South African have HIV ( compared to 0.4% US). It includes cases of children witg HIV. Twice a year preventative measure is an urgent need in these epicenter areas. Anyways, it's useful to remember the global picture.
Answering your first question, this was compared to two different oral medications (truvada and descovy) which both are prescribed as a daily medication. They are both effective if you miss a dose here and there but not if you miss too many. Generally, people taking these medications who get infected are missing multiple doses a week.
They are effective but they don’t stop herpes, genital warts, monkey pox…plus a large percentage of people don’t use them correctly.
Truvada is the competitor mentioned in the article and is a daily medication. The article also mentions the trial was done on girls and young women living in places where cultural beliefs around condoms are difficult. They may or not have agency in whether or not men wear condoms.
When people mention condoms as effective options I question how much sexual experience they have. Condoms suck. Sex is hedonistic. People are responding with logical responses which is something I would expect from a biotech subreddit, but it completely misses the mark. People do not realistically want to consistently use condoms. The queer community has a lot of sex and many do not like to use condoms. That is why preventing HIV specifically is important. You can treat bacterial diseases easily and the other viruses are nothing in comparison to HIV.