Volunteers who responded most to a cocktail of antiretroviral drugs in an HIV prevention trial among gay men had a reduced risk of 92 percent of being infected by the AIDS virus, researchers said on Wednesday.
They presented the work as a last-minute, or "late-breaker", contribution to the world forum on AIDS science in Rome.
The research looked at a group of men who took part in a major trial called iPrEx HIV Prevention Study.
iPrEx explored the idea that an uninfected person taking daily AIDS drugs could be shielded from the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), a novel approach called pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP.
The overall findings, published last November, found that use of a drug called Truvada reduced HIV infections by 44 percent compared with a dummy pill, also called a placebo.
The new study looked at a sub-set of men who had the highest concentrations of the drug in their blood -- a telltale that they had been highly disciplined about taking the pill and that their system had also absorbed it better.
In this smaller group, the risk of HIV transmission was 92 percent lower compared to counterparts who took the placebo.
"PrEP is an important HIV prevention tool with the potential to prevent significant numbers of new HIV infections," said the study's director, Robert Grant of the Gladstone Institute of Virology and Immuno
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