Breaking: One in Four Gay and Bisexual Men Should Be on PrEP

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released new data Tuesday to alert 1.2 million Americans and their doctors that they should be counseled about using the strategy known as PrEP, or pre-exposure prophylaxis.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released new data Tuesday to alert the 1.2 million Americans and their doctors that they should be counseled about using PrEP, or pre-exposure prophylaxis, currently a daily HIV prevention pill known as Truvada.

That one million plus figure includes one in four (or 492,000) sexually active gay and bisexual adult men. 

Truvada is the only drug currently approved for PrEP by the Food and Drug Administration, and though the approval came in 2012, he Washington Post reports that a third of primary-care doctors surveyed had never heard of it.

That's one reason why the CDC launched a multimedia campaign, "Treatment Works," last month to spread awareness.

The CDC announced new clinical guidelines in May that recommend anyone who is at an elevated risk for HIV take PrEP, which can reduce the risk of HIV by up to 99 percent. In September, researchers at Kaiser Permanente in San Francisco announced among their two-year study there were zero transmissions of HIV among the more than 600 participants — most of whom were gay or bi men in sexual relationships with HIV-positive men — who took PrEP daily.

In addition to the one in four gay and bisexual men, those who should consider PrEp are injection-drug users and anyone with a sexual partner in a higher risk group.

For more info on PrEP, read The Advocate's award-winning series on PrEP — its benefits or drawbacks, myths about its effects, and why the HIV prevention strategy has not been more widely accepted by gay men.