Real-World Evidence of Apretude Highlights High Adherence, Effectiveness as PrEP | ID Week 2024

Among the many abstracts being presented by ViiV Healthcare at ID Week, Harmony Garges, M.D, senior vice president, chief medical officer and head of global medical at ViiV Healthcare, highlighted two focusing on the real-world effectiveness of ViiV’s long-acting HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) medication, Apretude (cabotegravir long-acting). She explained that the abstracts draw from large, diverse cohorts, showing approximately 99% effectiveness in real-world settings.

“We are seeing strong adherence, meaning, you know, once someone is starting on these medicines, they are continuing to take them as scheduled,” Garges said. “And this is really important in the PrEP space because what we have seen, at least with oral HIV prevention in the past, is that someone might not persist on HIV prevention more than a couple months. You know, they tended to sort of start and stop and go on and off. And that's problematic because, of course, the medicine will only be effective if you're taking it, and you sustain taking it and you're adherent to it.”

She also discussed areas where the results of the real-world evidence didn’t mimic the clinical trials. One she highlighted was the challenges of following updated testing guidelines, which require both antigen and RNA tests before injections, which can be “onerous.” For oral medications, this testing wasn’t necessary, and physicians simply used an antibody test.

“What we've seen, not only in these studies, but even just through advisory boards, is a lot of physicians weren't strictly following that guidance,” Garges said. “Again, they were often doing the antibody test, but not the follow-up viral load test.”