Gay and bisexual men taking the PrEP drug Viread were no more inclined to engage in risky sex than those not taking the drug, researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — and not the drug’s manufacturer Gilead Sciences, which would be inclined to conclude as much — found.
A trial of the drug that included 373 HIV-negative men in Atlanta, San Francisco, and Boston, where half the men took the drug and half took a placebo, was designed not to test the potency of Viread (which researchers this week concluded “a vaginal gel containing Viread was shown to reduce infections by 39 percent among women in South Africa”) but to see whether men taking it would be any more inclined to engage in unprotected sex. The data concluded there was no change in sexual behaviors, nor were there any serious side effects.
