Monday, February 28, 2011

Doctors not pushing Truvada to prevent HIV — and that may be fine with Gilead


Doctors aren't prescribing Gilead Science Inc.'s two-in-one, once-a-day HIV-fighting pill Truvada for preventive use, according to Bloomberg — and that may be just fine with the Foster City-based company (NASDAQ: GILD).
Truvada was central to a study led by the J. David Gladstone Institutes of San Francisco that showed late last year that men who took the $12,000-a-year pill lowered their risk of being infected by the AIDS virus from sex with other men.
The study's strong results led some to believe that Truvada would see a bump up in prescriptions. The Bloomberg story, however, said 6,805 to 8,107 new prescriptions of Truvada were written each week between Dec. 1 and Feb. 19, compared to 5,819 to 7,698 prescriptions during the same period a year earlier.
But Gilead hasn't even applied to the Food and Drug Administration to expand Truvada's label to include prevention of the virus in male-to-male sex

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