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 The injection - Apretude - to prevent the virus that causes AIDS is
aimed as an alternative to daily pills and has been approved for use
in at-risk adults and adolescents.
Its first two doses are administered one month apart and then the
injection is given every two months thereafter.
Patients can start their treatment with Apretude or take oral
cabotegravir for four weeks to assess how well they tolerate the
drug.
Apretude comes with a boxed warning to not use the drug unless a
negative HIV test is confirmed. A boxed warning on the label is
FDA’s strictest warning and calls attention to serious or
life-threatening risks of a drug.
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 Apretude's approval was based
on a final study showing it was found to be 66%
more effective in preventing HIV infections than
Gilead's Truvada daily oral pills.
Cabotegravir and the daily oral pill were both well tolerated in the
study, which was conducted on men who engage in sexual activity with
other men and transgender women who have sex with men, putting them
at risk of contracting HIV.
(Reporting by Dania Nadeem in Bengaluru; Editing by Aditya Soni)
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