The CDC issued a recommendation that Americans at risk for AIDS take Gilead’s Truvada, a daily pill that has demonstrated it can prevent the infection.
The New York Times conjectures that if this advice is followed, this could signal a shift in AIDS prevention, from condom usage to Truvada and “would mean a 50-fold increase in the number of prescriptions” for the drug.
It also suggests that CDC’s statement may have been due to a recent CDC survey in November that showed condom use is going down, with a 20% rise from 2005 to 2011 in gay men reporting unprotected sex.
This isn’t the first time that the NYT has written about the drug’s acceptance either. In December of 2013, the paper offered readers an explanation for the drug’s low uptake among the gay community.
