Gilead Drugs to Prevent HIV Spurned by African Women in Study
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Drugs made by Gilead Sciences Inc. that can prevent healthy adults from getting HIV didn’t reduce infections in African women because of lack of adherence to treatment, raising questions about the medicines’ usefulness in stopping the spread of AIDS.
About two thirds of women didn’t consistently use Gilead’s daily pill Truvada or Viread, which came in the form of a pill or vaginal gel, according to the study released yesterday at the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections in Atlanta. The women in the study said they were deterred from using the medicines because of stigma associated with AIDS drugs and side effects, which can include diarrhea and nightmares.