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Twice-Yearly HIV Shot Shows 100% Effectiveness in Women

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Re: Twice-Yearly HIV Shot Shows 100% Effectiveness in Women

#61
post #48

This treatment does not in fact prevent HIV infection. It prevents infected cells from producing viable virus particles. Because of this, it seems very likely that if any patient being treated with this drug ever discontinued it, they could develop HIV quickly from cells that were already infected in their body that had been suppressed from producing virus particles but were no longer suppressed. I was not able to fi…

The problems are bigger than that. The trials don't attempt to show impact on AIDS itself. Biomarker studies like this have a long history of going wrong due to statistical or theory related problems.

Re: Twice-Yearly HIV Shot Shows 100% Effectiveness in Women

#62
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you ensure that you always have a sufficient stock of vitamins either you, despite being in a different part of the world on a weekly basis? Do you have kids, if so how do you deal with frequent disruptions to the morning routine? Do you not have days where you just need to get up and go e.g. to catch a flight, get to a meeting, take a kid to school, or because you stayed up late and got drunk, etc... and taki…

> Do you have kids, if so how do you deal with frequent disruptions to the morning routine? Do you not have days where you just need to get up and go e.g. to catch a flight, get to a meeting, take a kid to school, or because you stayed up late and got drunk, etc... and taking vitamins took a back seat? This is crazy. You deal with the morning routine by taking your pills when the alarm goes off, because there's nothi…

> there's nothing the kids can be doing that won't wait for that

There are plenty of things kids - especially young kids - will do that require you to push tasks back. Like a vomit, poo, or spillage situation needing immediate attention. Or throwing a tantrum if you try to bring them back upstairs where the pills are (thus waking everyone else up). Not to mention that it can be exhausting if they're not sleeping well - which can be half the time - and it's tough to remember every little thing when you're exhausted.

> If you drank so much that it rendered you unconscious ... that's not exactly an unavoidable necessity of life

You asked "how much time does it take to swallow a pill". The convenience of that depends on people's lifestyles. Lots of people will wake up at 7am in the week, go out and have a few drinks on Friday/Saturday, and wake up whenever/wherever they wake up the next day. That is not an extreme situation. It's a great freedom to dynamically adapt when you go to bed and when you wake up. Requiring a change to that lifestyle is hardly evidence that something is trivially simple.

Re: Twice-Yearly HIV Shot Shows 100% Effectiveness in Women

#64
post #4
post #3

> and results published Wednesday show it worked nearly as well in men. So not as well? Is there a biological reason for this? Also, is it typical to do such studies on single genders rather than on a mix of humans?

Receptive PIV sex has 2% transmission rate, PIA is 20%. Cis men don't have a vagina, so...

could you undo the abbreviations please?

Re: Twice-Yearly HIV Shot Shows 100% Effectiveness in Women

#65
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A few reasons: - Women and girls make up the majority of HIV cases, especially in the developing world - If you're estimating the effect in both men and women, you're reducing your power to detect an effect in either group. If you have a limited budget, it's going to be hard to recruit, etc., you may well be better off powering your study for the group you think is going to be the most impactful, then going back. We…

That's inaccurate. The vast majority of all cases are in men. For instance in America only 22% of HIV+ people are women. Our World In Data has a map that shows this visually: https://ourworldindata.org/hiv-aids The only place this isn't true is sub-Saharan Africa. As there's no biological explanation for that discrepancy it's been hypothesized that it's because in Africa a lot of reported HIV cases are fraudulent, du…

It's not inaccurate. More than half of the people currently living with HIV worldwide are women:

https://www.unaids.org/en/resources/infographics/girls-and-w....

https://www.hiv.gov/hiv-basics/overview/data-and-trends/glob...

Re: Twice-Yearly HIV Shot Shows 100% Effectiveness in Women

#66
post #48

This treatment does not in fact prevent HIV infection. It prevents infected cells from producing viable virus particles. Because of this, it seems very likely that if any patient being treated with this drug ever discontinued it, they could develop HIV quickly from cells that were already infected in their body that had been suppressed from producing virus particles but were no longer suppressed. I was not able to fi…

The problems are bigger than that. The trials don't attempt to show impact on AIDS itself. Biomarker studies like this have a long history of going wrong due to statistical or theory related problems.

That’s because aids, the subsequent syndrome derived from hiv infection, wasn’t the target of the study?

Re: Twice-Yearly HIV Shot Shows 100% Effectiveness in Women

#67
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Receptive PIV sex has 2% transmission rate, PIA is 20%. Cis men don't have a vagina, so...

could you undo the abbreviations please?

Penis in vagina. It's a specification. It's like "birthing parent", to be clear what hardware is being used.

Given that HIV infection rates are very variable (over an order of magnitude, sometimes two) by subpopulation, clarifications detailing what hardware is doing what are very necessary.

Re: Twice-Yearly HIV Shot Shows 100% Effectiveness in Women

#68
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? That makes it better? Living in the first world country means you don't make very human mistakes? It means life doesn't get in the way sometimes? Look, your view seems to be "people in first world countries should be acting how I think they should act, and I just can't imagine myself getting into this situation so that means they can't, and thus I'm going to treat them like they did something wrong". You don'…

I think people should take responsibility for themselves. It's not a hard concept to understand. It's part of adulthood.

What does this even mean? Since when does "take responsibility" mean "I won't make mistakes" or "I wont' find myself in an context which causes me an outcome that I didn't want"? Or "I don't deserve good treatment if I find myself in a situation?"

You are showing yourself to not be a serious thinking here. Your view point is just "be better, people", which lacks any kind of intellectual or philosophical depth.

Re: Twice-Yearly HIV Shot Shows 100% Effectiveness in Women

#69
post #56
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you ensure that you always have a sufficient stock of vitamins either you, despite being in a different part of the world on a weekly basis? Do you have kids, if so how do you deal with frequent disruptions to the morning routine? Do you not have days where you just need to get up and go e.g. to catch a flight, get to a meeting, take a kid to school, or because you stayed up late and got drunk, etc... and taki…

I don't have much issue with buying vitamins, because I take them with me. Just as I take toothpaste, etc. If I am there long enough to need more vitamins, it is in the same category as needing more toothpaste, and you resupply as you would at home. No kids. I do have emergency paging and downed server / PROD to deal with 24/7, not the same as kids, but wake-disrupting all the same. There is rarely something urgent e…

> I don't have much issue with buying vitamins, because I take them with me.

Nevertheless you do have to remember to pack them, and you need to regularly replenish your stocks. I'm guessing that this replenishing happens at least as often as every 6 months, which is how often you need to arrange the injection in question. By the sounds of it you do a lot of travelling, so you may need to anticipate cases where you are away at the time you would normally replenish stocks.

> you resupply as you would at home

How does that happen? You notice how many pills are left in the bottle, and make a note to order more when it's getting low? Or immediately make an order there and then?

I know I'm being really pedantic, but I'm trying to illustrate why many people would perceive daily pill-taking to be strictly more labour-intensive than a 6-monthly injection.

Re: Twice-Yearly HIV Shot Shows 100% Effectiveness in Women

#70
post #21

Great news that it's so effective in women. Less great news is that availability to people who could use it the most is based on the whims of the drug maker.

At least for now, PrEP is available on most/all drug plans for free or very, very cheap, in the United States https://www.goodrx.com/truvada . No idea what happens when the ACA is further harmed. And per the article, > Drugmaker Gilead said it will allow cheap, generic versions to be sold in 120 poor countries with high HIV rates — mostly in Africa, Southeast Asia and the Caribbean. So, the places that need it most w…

>So, the places that need it most will be able to get it for cheap.

It's still about a dollar a day, which is a lot of money for the most needy.

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