The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved the drug lenacapavir for pre-exposure prophylaxis of HIV infection, which is more than 99,9 percent effective. It is taken as an injection twice a year.
The drug will provide better protection against HIV than daily pills that a person may forget to take. About this reported on the website of the manufacturing company Gilead Sciences.
Preparation lenacapavir received breakthrough therapy status for the treatment of HIV infection back in 2019. It blocks the assembly of the virus's envelope, which prevents it from replicating. Last year, the results of two phases of clinical trials of this drug were also published: pershu were conducted on women, while a friend — on men and transgender or non-binary people.
Both trials showed greater efficacy than daily prophylactic pills and found no significant side effects, apart from local injection reactions, headache and nausea. The drug is planned to be administered to adults and adolescents weighing 35 kilograms or more.
Gilead Sciences has not yet announced the price of the drug, which will be released under the brand name Yeztugo, but its are evaluated at $25 a year. This is cheaper than a year of HIV treatment with the same drug, but even for high-income countries, this cost of the drug may make it unaffordable for the majority of the population. In this case, the drug would not fulfill its primary function of fighting the AIDS pandemic. However, the drug's manufacturers are working with other pharmaceutical companies to launch cheaper analogues of the drug in middle- and low-income countries.
