We have had two articles published recently on bmj.com, looking at drug prevention of HIV; PeP - Post-exposure Prophylaxis and PreP - Pre-exposure Prophylaxis, neither prevent the virus from entering the body, but they do prevent the infection from taking hold.
There are lots of questions that doctors have about these - what are the risk profiles of patients who should be offered the treatments? How can they be prescribed? What are the side effects? And if you're in England, where PreP is not yet available on the NHS, can doctors advise their patients to buy it online?
Michael Brady, Sexual health and HIV consultant at Kings College Hospital and Medical Director of the Terrence Higgins Trust, joins us to help answer those questions.
Further reading
BMJ article on PeP https://www.bmj.com/content/363/bmj.k4928
BMJ article on PreP
BASHH guidelines on PreP - https://www.bashhguidelines.org/media/1189/prep-2018.pdf
https://iwantprepnow.co.uk
http://www.aidsmap.com/