Cross posted from Nature’s The Great Beyond blog.
A major clinical trial on promising anti-HIV drug Truvada has been ended early after it became clear it would be “highly unlikely” to prove effective in preventing new infections.
Family Health International (FHI), the non-profit overseers of the phase III trial, described the development as “surprising and disappointing”. Many AIDS researchers had high hopes for Truvada, not least because it was recently proven to be effective in preventing infection in gay men.
After reviewing interim data on the FEM-PrEP study an independent monitoring committee concluded the study would be “highly unlikely to be able to demonstrate the effectiveness of Truvada in preventing HIV infection in the study population, even if it continued to its originally planned conclusion”, says FHI (press release).
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