Researchers continue to search a better treatment for HIV infections and a better strategy to prevent infection from HIV, the virus which causes AIDS. One of the top concerns of AIDS researchers who participate at the 17th International AIDS Conference in Mexico City is the need for new approaches to AIDS prevention.

Although the number of the new drugs beginning clinical trials has declined, researchers continue the search with small but sure steps. A new report, called “Anticipating the Results of PrEP Trials,” released by the AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition (AVAC), a New York-based group that promotes prevention, draws attention to new studies that are looking at the efficacy of a PrEP, a promising HIV prevention strategy in which HIV negative people could take an antiretroviral drug (ARV), or combination of ARVs, on a regular basis in the hopes of reducing their risk of acquiring HIV.

PrEP clinical trials are currently planned or underway in countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America and North America. The trials will examine the use of single daily doses of Gilead’s Viread and Truvada, alone or in combination, for pre- exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP. As many as 16,000 healthy, uninfected people will be in PrEP studies by late 2009, more than are planned to be in all the world’s late-stage vaccine and preventive gel trials combined at that time, Warren said, as quoted by Bloomberg. Initial findings of the safety and effectiveness might come early next year.

“The best way to prevent HIV drug resistance is to prevent HIV infections,” Mitchell Warren, AVAC’s executive director, said at the conference.

“Although still unproven human clinical research, PrEP is considered one of the promising clinical interventions against HIV currently in development,” Warren added.

The CDC spends about $750 million a year on AIDS prevention, which is, perhaps, as important as treatment.