According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 38,000 people in the U.S. were newly infected with HIV in 2017. For more than 15 years, the first line of therapy has been a suite of antiretroviral drugs in pill form, taken once a day. Although this treatment has transformed HIV from a certain killer to a chronic disease in much of the developed world, there are problems. For example, some people have trouble taking their pill every day. Therefore, pharmaceutical companies are developing injectable HIV drugs that target different components of the virus and can be administered once every few weeks, writes Senior Editor Megha Satyanarayana.
Currently, at least nine long-acting injectable therapies for HIV are in clinical development. Recently, ViiV Healthcare released data from two Phase III clinical trials of a combination treatment of two drugs that inhibit different parts of the virus. When given as an intramuscular injection, the therapy was as effective as pills and persisted in the body for at least a month.
HIV Prevention and Care Project 