Multiple Paths to HIV Prevention: The Power of Choice

metroweekly.com:

The word of the week at the 2024 HIV Research for Prevention Conference, held last week in Lima, Peru, was “choice.”As in PrEP choice, a driving concern for the more than 1,300 scientists, advocates, community representatives, and policymakers who gathered at the fifth annual HIVR4P conference, organized by the International AIDS Society.“This is the only global scientific conference focused exclusively on the rapidly evolving field of HIV prevention research,” said Dr.

Beatriz Grinsztejn, the infectious diseases researcher serving as IAS president, addressing the event’s opening press conference.Attendees at HIVR4P 2024 — which included NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director Jeanne Marrazzo, who succeeded Anthony Fauci in the role — spent the week at sessions poring over the latest advances in science and research that could expand the growing list of available HIV prevention options.Currently, those who want or need to take some form of pre-exposure prophylaxis to prevent HIV might opt for daily oral PrEP, long-acting injectable PrEP medicines, or, in Europe and a handful of African nations, a topical vaginal ring.

The underlying point there being that choice depends on access.Not everyone at risk of HIV, everywhere in the world, has the same access to all the same prevention tools science has produced.

But access, though a key topic of research and discussion, was not the buzzword at the HIVR4P 2024 press conference.“It’s becoming increasingly clear that the HIV prevention field is focusing on expanding choice for women among long-acting prevention technologies,” said the morning’s first presenter, Jeremy Nuttall, of the Population Council’s Center for Biomedical Research (CBR), a.