Let's Talk About PrEP

What is PrEP?

http://www.whatisprep.org/

 

PrEP means Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis, and it’s the use of anti-HIV medication that keeps HIV negative people from becoming infected.  PrEP is approved by the FDA and has been shown to be safe and effective.  A single pill taken once daily, it is highly effective against HIV when taken every day.  The medication interferes with HIV’s ability to copy itself in your body after you’ve been exposed.  This prevents it from establishing an infection and making you sick.

 

Even though PrEP has been around in the U.S. for over a year, not a lot of people know about it.  And, even fewer people feel like they know enough about it to be able to make an informed decision about whether or not to use it.  For those who do use it, the information they have might be more focused on practical issues, like where to get it, rather than on what PrEP does in the body to prevent HIV infection.

 

By using animation to show PrEP in the body and why “once a day” is recommended, people can see what PrEP does and people who currently use PrEP can create an image of what happens when they take a PrEP pill every day.

View the video to get information about PrEP and see an illustration of how it can work inside the body to prevent HIV infection.

---

Learn More About PrEP

---

AIDS.gov - PrEP information page (aids.gov/hiv-aids-basics/prevention/reduce-your-risk/pre-exposure-prophylaxis)

 

AIDSinfoNet - Reliable, Up-To-Date Treatment Information (aidsinfonet.org/fact_sheets/view/160)

 

AVAC - Global Advocacy for HIV Prevention (avac.org/ht/d/sp/i/262/pid/262)

Avert - AVERTing HIV and AIDS (avert.org/pre-exposure-prophylaxis.htm)

 

CDC - Questions and Answers from the U.S Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (cdc.gov/hiv/prevention/research/prep)

My PrEP Experience - Real stories from real people who adopted PrEP for prevention in the US (myprepexperience.blogspot.com)

PrEP Facts - San Francisco AIDS Foundation PrEP information in visual format for MSM and heterosexual individuals, with an option for Spanish (prepfacts.org)

PrEP Watch - Interactive webpage with information and resources on gaining access to PrEP (prepwatch.org)

PrEParing for HIV - An Epidemic Interventions Initiative by the University of California

Project Inform - Videos, publications and resources (projectinform.com/prep)

SFHIV - City and County of San Francisco Department of Public Health’s PrEP information page (sfhiv.org/resources/prep)

Guidance for Use of PrEP in Practice and Research Settings

WHO - World Health Organization (who.int/hiv/pub/guidance_prep/en)

CDC - Downloadable PDF from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (cdc.gov/nchhstp/newsroom/docs/CDC-Interim-PrEP-Guidance-012811.pdf)

From the Makers of Truvada

start.truvada.com - Information about Truvada for PrEP for healthcare providers, consumers and educators

truvadapreprems.com/truvadaprep-resources - Downloadable forms and resources for PrEP prescribers and users

start.truvada.com/individual/truvadaprep-questions - Questions and Answers about Truvada for PrEP

This video and What is PrEP? is brought to you by the PrEP REP project, led by K Rivet Amico, University of Connecticut, and Sybil Hosek, Stroger Hospital of Cook County Chicago, in collaboration with Chris Balthazar, Stroger Hospital. Animation by Tom Coggia.

This project was supported by an unrestricted educational grant from Gilead Sciences, Inc. The content and views expressed in this video are those of the presenters and do not necessarily represent the views, opinions or positions of and should not be attributed to the funder for the PrEP REP project or affiliated institutions.

 

This work is free to be shared, distributed or transmitted. It may not be altered or transformed without permission under a
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.

 

Infections With 'Nightmare Bacteria' Are On The Rise In U.S. Hospitals - NPR

Federal officials warned Tuesday that an especially dangerous group of superbugs has become a significant health problem in hospitals throughout the United States.

These germs, known as carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae, or CRE, have become much more common in the last decade, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And the risk they pose to health is becoming evident.

"What's called CRE are nightmare bacteria," Dr. Thomas Frieden, director of the CDC, tells Shots. "They're basically a triple threat."

First of all, they are resistant to virtually all antibiotics, including the ones doctors use as a last-ditch option.

Second, these bugs can transfer their invincibility to other bacteria. "The mechanism of resistance to antibiotics not only works for one bacteria, but can be spread to others," Frieden says.

Third, the bacteria can be deadly. Infection with the bacteria "have a fatality rate as high as 50 percent," Frieden says.

Health Care

Hospitals Fight To Stop Superbugs' Spread

Although the resistant bacteria potentially pose a risk to anyone, people whose immune systems are weaker, such as elderly people, children and people who have other health problems, tend to be most susceptible to infection.

If the drug-resistance starts to spread from bacteria that are usually a problem in hospitals to much more widespread causes of infections, the risk could rise even more. "If it spread to things like E. coli, which is a common urinary tract infection, it would be a very serious problem," Frieden says.

The CDC sounded the alarm because of data that show the proportion of bacteria that have this resistance to many drugs has quadrupled in the last decade or so.

CRE cases were reported by 4 percent of hospitals in 2012, up from about 1 percent from about a decade earlier, according to the report. In long-term care hospitals the situation is even worse — about 18 percent have reported cases, the CDC says.

In addition, the proportion of Enterobacteriaceae bacteria that were resistant increased from 1.2 percent in 2001 to 4.2 percent in 2011, the CDC reported.

"And that's for the whole family." says Dr. Arjun Srinivasan, the CDC's associate director for health care-associated infection-prevention programs. "When we look at one member of this family, a bacteria called Klebsiella, which is the most common type of CRE that we see in the United States, resistance there has gone from about 2 percent to over 10 percent. So a dramatic increase in the frequency with which these organisms are being seen in our hospitals in the United States."

Infectious disease specialist Dr. Brad Spellberg, of the Los Angeles Biomedical Research Institute at the Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, likens the situation to the Titanic's ill-fated voyage. "We're not talking about an iceberg that's down the line," he says. "The ship has hit the iceberg. We're taking on water. We already have people dying. Not only of CRE, but of untreatable CRE."

So far, these infections are still relatively rare. And they have been seen only in hospitals.

The big fear is that they'll start to move out of hospitals and into the communities around them. "If CRE spreads out of hospitals and into communities, that's when the ship is totally underwater and we all drown," Spellberg says.

To prevent that from happening, the CDC and others are calling on hospitals to contain CRE. "We can nip this in the bud. But it's going to take a lot of effort on the part of hospitals," Frieden says

The first thing hospitals need to do is test patients to see if they have these bugs. "The basic steps are finding patients with CRE and making sure they are isolated so that they don't spread it to others," Frieden says.

That includes common-sense things like keeping them away from other patients and sterilizing everything they come into contact with.

"We know that this can stop outbreaks. It has helped in Florida. It's helped in other countries," Frieden says. "And the good news about this is that it still hasn't spread so widely that we can't stop it."

And doctors have to use antibiotics more carefully to prevent more germs from developing into dangerous superbugs.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2013/03/05/173526084/infections-with-nightmare-bacteria-are-on-the-rise-in-u-s-hospitals