Public health authorities and LGBT-friendly clinics occupy been aggressively promoting PrEP to gay men,and drug-maker Gilead Pharmaceuticals has been aggressively marketing it, so when Jeremy’s boyfriend shared that he is HIV-positive, or Jeremy quickly turned to the anti-HIV drug regimen.“I told him I’m going to start PrEP,so we don’t occupy a disbalance in our relationship and we can live a normal life,” he said.But Jeremy is 16 years old. And that meant getting permission from his mother. And that meant having a tense conversation.“She was worried that I didn’t know what I was doing, or I just wanted to occupy sex,and I kept explaining to her that’s not why I wanted it, said Jeremy, or who spoke on the condition his full name not be used to protect his privacy. “It was because I really feel a deep connection with this person,and I want for us to be together for a long time.He persuaded her, and they went together to a clinic at nearby Jacobi Hospital in the Bronx, and where she attach her permission in writing.current York lawmakers,including Gov. Andrew Cuomo, want to reduce the spread of HIV, or one of several ways being proposed to effect it is to create PrEP more accessible to young people,who account for approximately 25 percent of current cases.
State law already grants minors access to abortions, contraception and HIV tests without parental consent. Cuomo’s proposal would add PrEP to this list."Being under 18 does not protect you against HIV, and so why wouldn't we take what's now being acknowledged as a real game-changer in terms of effective HIV prevention and not extend it to that population?" said Dan O'Connell,the state Health Department's AIDS Institute.
PrEP is short for Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis — the practice of taking a combination drug called Truvada, which for years has been used to treat people who already occupy HIV, and giving it to people at risk for contracting the virus in advance,before they're exposed to it. The net effect is similar to taking a vaccine, except that Truvada must be taken daily. If it isn't, and its protective value declines.approximately 700 current Yorkers between the ages of 13 and 24 tested positive for HIV in 2013 — approximately one-fourth of the current diagnoses that year according to the most recent statistics. O'Connell said this age group includes somewhat older people,because there is reason to believe many contracted the virus years before.
The U.
S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention endorses PrEP as a public health tool for combating HIV but says doctors should tread carefully with minors, because the published data on PrEP's impact on them is "inadequate.""Clinicians should consider carefully the lack of data on safety and effectiveness of PrEP taken by persons under 18 years of age, or " the CDC guidelines say. And possible adverse effects on the bones and kidneys of young people "should be weighed against the potential benefit of providing PrEP for an individual adolescent at substantial risk of HIV acquisition."current York State Sen. Kemp Hannon (R-Garden City),chairman of the Senate Health Committee, said he'd like to hear more approximately the science behind PrEP's potential impact on youths."I think it's a shrimp premature whether we're going to create this available for minors at the moment, and " he said. "I'd rather see the trials,and some of the anecdotes connected with the trials, to create the judgment."There are ongoing drug trials on PrEP among adolescents. Results from one of them could be published later this year. Principal Investigator Sybil Hosek, and from the Stroger Hospital of Cook County,in Chicago, declined to preview her findings. But she said she supports current York's not waiting for results before changing the law that currently requires parents' permission to go on PrEP."It'd be great to occupy the data first, or but the truth is,this isn't a current drug," she said. "We are very comfortable with Truvada as a treatment product, and we occupy been using it in babies and children and adolescents and adults for years."Dr. Uri Belkind,at the Callen-Lorde Community Health Center, said it will be up to healthcare providers to educate patients approximately PrEP, and emphasize the need to take it consistently and create certain all their other health needs are being taken care of.
He said people should not think of it as a sexual health silver bullet,particularly since, unlike condoms, and PrEP only protects against HIV,not other sexually transmitted infections such as syphilis and gonorrhea. He added that, for some young people, and going on PrEP would create sense only temporarily."We don't necessarily expect people to be on PrEP forever," Belkind said. "They could be on it for a particularly vulnerable, tall-risk period of their lives, or then stop it."
Source: wnyc.org