8 ms·

I wonder if that's true though. I don't have a medicine background but I'm loosely following this development. I think the term drug resistance became popular w

I wonder if that's true though. I don't have a medicine background but I'm loosely following this development. I think the term drug resistance became popular with all these tuberculosis cases. What happened was that people got TB, they went to the doctor and got medicine. Then things got better and people felt healthy again so they stopped taking their medicine. BUT in reality they were supposed to take it for a longer period of time and then TB broke out again. And thus becoming drug resistant. https://www.who.int/tb/areas-of-work/drug-resistant-tb/xdr-tb-faq/en/ https://www.who.int/tb/areas-of-work/drug-resistant-tb/xdr-t...

quotemstr 7y ago
Right. For resistance to evolve, some part of the treated population must survive. (You can't evolve resistance to atomic weapons dropped on your head.) Is PReP really effective enough to ensure that there are no survivors? Sure, maybe it is, used correctly at therapeutic doses. What if it becomes common enough to get into the water at much lower doses? What if people split pills to reduce costs? ISTM that there are many potential avenues for evolving resistance.
- ShlomoS 7y ago
  >Is PReP really effective enough to ensure that there are no survivors? No, the first bug chaser to successfully contract HIV while on it was quite proud of his achievement. Clearly the virus can survive.
- ls612 7y ago
  HIV is sexually transmitted. It can’t survive in the water or the air. So the presence of anti HIV drugs in the environment shouldn’t have an impact.