What’s keeping PrEP under wraps

PrEP, or pre-exposure prophylaxis, is a safe and effective medication that can prevent at-risk patients from contracting HIV, yet the treatment is not widely known by physicians or the patient base that could benefit most from it. Learn what HIV experts say about the treatment and the obstacles to integrating it into primary care practice. Getting the word out PrEP reaches a small proportion of the Americans who could benefit from it, experts said at an education session by the AMA LGBT Advisory Committee during the 2016 AMA Annual Meeting. “What’s really interesting about it is a lot of people haven’t heard about it,” said Magda Houlberg, MD, chief clinical officer of the Howard Brown Health Center in Chicago. “You’d think people would want to shout it from the mountains.” PrEP consists of tenofovir/emtricitabine, a once-a-day prevention option for HIV-negative men and women that reduces the risk of HIV. While the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved PrEP in July 2012, a 2015 survey by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that 34 percent of primary care physicians and nurses had never heard of it. The CDC offers more information on PrEP at its website on HIV/AIDS. What gets in the way of adoption Obstacles to use remain, said panelist Noël Gordon, Jr., HIV specialist with the Human Rights Campaign. While 1.2 million Americans could benefit from the treatment, about 4 percent of them have used it, he said. He named seve...
Source: AMA Wire - Category: Journals (General) Authors: Source Type: news