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A Blue Pill Is Stopping HIV, World-First Study Shows

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Re: A Blue Pill Is Stopping HIV, World-First Study Shows

#41

Post by DenisM »

metildaa wrote: post #16
tptacek wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds pretty inexpensive. It looks like the previous standard of care cost $10-15,000 and wasn't generally curative. Meanwhile, the long-term cost of a progressing hep-c infection is quite high.

In the context of a decietful medical system that bills pie in the sky amounts for rendering basic care, a $100k cure for Hepatitis C might seem reasonable. But those who need it most are dying due to this pricing scam, which is standard for our healthcare in the US.

Who are these dying patients, can you elaborate?

Re: A Blue Pill Is Stopping HIV, World-First Study Shows

#42

Post by killjoywashere »

esf wrote: post #39
killjoywashere wrote: post #22

Interesting problem we're dealing with: Truvada potentially makes it harder to identify HIV+ blood donors (as their antibody titers fall naturally over time) and raises the question of whether HIV+ individuals will be more likely to attempt to donate in order to "prove they're safe". It is a well-known fact in their community that men having sex with men are deferred from being blood donors for 12 months from last ma…

Truvada does nothing to change identification of HIV+ donors. Truvada does not change response to HIV tests, an HIV+ person taking Truvada as part of treatment does not stop testing positive for HIV antibodies. Nothing changes from the existing blood donation situation due to Truvada.

Like most things in science, be suspicious of pure logical arguments. The question for any test, even a true-false, is first a matter of "how much". Antibodies fade over time, ergo various vaccine boosters, such as tetanus. At some point, we can't detect it.

Re: A Blue Pill Is Stopping HIV, World-First Study Shows

#43

Post by mrep »

metildaa wrote: post #23
chimeracoder wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But those who need it most are dying due to this pricing scam, which is standard for our healthcare in the US. Those who need it most are dying not due to the "pricing scam", but because they're incarcerated and therefore prohibited from receiving curative HCV treatment, at any price. The sticker price is high, but it's meaningless, because almost nobody is going to be paying the sticker price. Also, if you want to…

There are 3 million people living in the US with Hepatitis C, many who are needlessly dying from it are not incarcerated. The sticker price is a scam to make insurers feel good when they get double digit percentage discounts, while still lining Gileads pockets.

What's your alternative then?

Re: A Blue Pill Is Stopping HIV, World-First Study Shows

#44

Post by chimeracoder »

metildaa wrote: post #25
chimeracoder wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In the US, there is big money to be made bilking insurers and citizens for as much money aas possible with crazy drug prices. This is what funds most of the ads we see for PreP, and also makes this treatment inaccessible to those who need it most. This is wrong on so many levels. Most of the ads you see aren't funded by Gilead, or by any pharmaceutical company at all. They're funded by local agencies and nonprofits…

> Most of the ads you see aren't funded by Gilead, or by any pharmaceutical company at all. They're funded by local agencies and nonprofits tasked with HIV prevention efforts. This differs significantly from what I see, the local agencies in my area are focused on providing testing, care and treatment, not funding advertising. In the latter half of your comment, you literally described how this is set up to scam insu…

> This differs significantly from what I see, the local agencies in my area are focused on providing testing, care and treatment, not funding advertising.

Sounds like your local agencies either aren't doing their jobs or aren't spending their money appropriately. Public service announcements are an important part of public health in every country. Dissemination of public health information and knowledge of what resources are available doesn't happen by magic.

> In the latter half of your comment, you literally described how this is set up to scam insurance. If one has insurance, everything is great, otherwise they get stuck without medication they need.

"the copay with insurance is less than the out-of-pocket expense without insurance" is not, in se evidence or a description of a scam.

Re: A Blue Pill Is Stopping HIV, World-First Study Shows

#45

Post by chimeracoder »

metildaa wrote: post #23
chimeracoder wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But those who need it most are dying due to this pricing scam, which is standard for our healthcare in the US. Those who need it most are dying not due to the "pricing scam", but because they're incarcerated and therefore prohibited from receiving curative HCV treatment, at any price. The sticker price is high, but it's meaningless, because almost nobody is going to be paying the sticker price. Also, if you want to…

There are 3 million people living in the US with Hepatitis C, many who are needlessly dying from it are not incarcerated. The sticker price is a scam to make insurers feel good when they get double digit percentage discounts, while still lining Gileads pockets.

> There are 3 million people living in the US with Hepatitis C, many who are needlessly dying from it are not incarcerated.

I was responding to the claim about people who need it the most. People who are incarcerated are, in fact, the people who benefit from curing HCV the most. And the price is not the reason they are unable to access it.

> The sticker price is a scam to make insurers feel good when they get double digit percentage discounts, while still lining Gileads pockets.

Even if you subscribe to the absurd notion that massive insurance companies incentivized by their bottom line could be oblivious to that dynamic and content with "feeling good" about an imaginary discount that lines their vendor's pockets, this argument falls apart when you look at how much the same medication costs in countries like Germany and France.

Sovaldi costs about the same over there, and in fact, used to cost more than it did in the US (in addition to receiving approval much later than they did in the US).

Re: A Blue Pill Is Stopping HIV, World-First Study Shows

#46

Post by chimeracoder »

drewmassey wrote: post #32
chimeracoder wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but in the United States it remains quite expensive if you don’t have insurance. Not really - Gilead provides assistance programs for people who have private insurance, for people on public insurance, and for people who are uninsured (there are three separate assistance programs). The plan for people who have private insurance is the best (you end up paying $0/year for PrEP), and the plan for people who are uninsur…

Ah perhaps I have stale information then. Last I heard retail truvada will run you north of $1,500 per month in the us.

> Ah perhaps I have stale information then. Last I heard retail truvada will run you north of $1,500 per month in the us.

The sticker price is meaningless. Because of the assistance programs, nobody needs to pay it, whether you're on private insurance or uninsured.

Re: A Blue Pill Is Stopping HIV, World-First Study Shows

#47

Post by dogma1138 »

killjoywashere wrote: post #42
esf wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Truvada does nothing to change identification of HIV+ donors. Truvada does not change response to HIV tests, an HIV+ person taking Truvada as part of treatment does not stop testing positive for HIV antibodies. Nothing changes from the existing blood donation situation due to Truvada.

Like most things in science, be suspicious of pure logical arguments. The question for any test, even a true-false, is first a matter of "how much". Antibodies fade over time , ergo various vaccine boosters, such as tetanus. At some point, we can't detect it.

I don’t know why is this being downvoted.

Anti bodies are produced to combat a pathogen if the levels of the pathogen are below of what would trigger the immune system you will not produce anti bodies and the ones that you have had produced will fade of over time you don’t have anti bodies for every pathogen you encounter flowing through your blood that would likely kill you.

If the pill can reduce the virus to trace levels and prevent HIV from developing into AIDS it’s not unreasonable to question if it can affect current HIV detection protocols.

Heck it wouldn’t surprise me if they measured the levels of anti bodies dropping while the levels of immune cells remaining normal to test the efficiency of the new drug.

That said I know some HIV tests check for the levels of virions in the blood these are often used for AIDS prognosis I don’t know how sensitive these are and if they’ll be able to detect trace levels of the virus if anti bodies response tests will become unreliable.

Also like with everything it’s not binary if this new treatment regiment can reduce the effectiveness of HIV testing by any meaningful margin it will be a problem.

I have very hard time believing that current HIV testing is 100% false negative proof.

Re: A Blue Pill Is Stopping HIV, World-First Study Shows

#48

Post by esf »

killjoywashere wrote: post #42
esf wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Truvada does nothing to change identification of HIV+ donors. Truvada does not change response to HIV tests, an HIV+ person taking Truvada as part of treatment does not stop testing positive for HIV antibodies. Nothing changes from the existing blood donation situation due to Truvada.

Like most things in science, be suspicious of pure logical arguments. The question for any test, even a true-false, is first a matter of "how much". Antibodies fade over time , ergo various vaccine boosters, such as tetanus. At some point, we can't detect it.

It's not a pure logical argument. What you are describing has never been observed though in anyone taking any type of antiretroviral therapy in the now 20+ years of the HAART era. This is a completely unfounded what-if.

The donors you don't want donating are already excluded by existing questions. And if you are that concerned about completely hypothetical unknowns then you might as well also not trust any of the batch testing done on the donors blood anyway. The questions can only ever be a useful prefilter, not a perfect safety net.

Re: A Blue Pill Is Stopping HIV, World-First Study Shows

#49

Post by esf »

dogma1138 wrote: post #47
killjoywashere wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like most things in science, be suspicious of pure logical arguments. The question for any test, even a true-false, is first a matter of "how much". Antibodies fade over time , ergo various vaccine boosters, such as tetanus. At some point, we can't detect it.

I don’t know why is this being downvoted. Anti bodies are produced to combat a pathogen if the levels of the pathogen are below of what would trigger the immune system you will not produce anti bodies and the ones that you have had produced will fade of over time you don’t have anti bodies for every pathogen you encounter flowing through your blood that would likely kill you. If the pill can reduce the virus to trace…

The pill was already part of HIV trratment, it does nothing to change the effectiveness of HIV tests.

The only unknown would be whether if you are one of the very, very few people that manages to contract HIV while taking prep, your antibody response is different during that initial window.

But: Anyone in that situation is already covered by the questions about recent partners and already is not donating if answering the existing questions in good faith. If they are donating in this situation at all they are already just ignoring the questions.

Re: A Blue Pill Is Stopping HIV, World-First Study Shows

#50

Post by jschwartzi »

drewmassey wrote: post #9

For me the biggest surprise in the article is that there are 180,000 men in the United States on Prep. Given a back of the envelope calculation of 4.8m out gay men in America (3% of population) that means adoption is itself around 3%. Somehow I imagined truvada was more widey adopted but perhaps it is just heavily marketed on the east coast.

There are side-effects of PrEP for long-term use. It can cause kidney damage. So it's not an entirely risk-free magic pill.

It's still much safer to only have sex while in a monagamous relationship where you and your partner have been tested for HIV. And checking test results before having sex with someone is also a very safe practice that is really common. But in the end if you're often sleeping with people who you don't trust, PrEP can be worth the risk.

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