The escalating cost of the only HIV prevention pill may have been a key factor hindering widespread use in recent years, according to a new analysis by U.S. government researchers, underscoring long-standing concerns over the ability to eradicate the virus.
From 2014 to 2018, total payments made by government programs, commercial insurers, and patients for Truvada, which was approved to prevent HIV in 2012, jumped from $114 million to nearly $2.1 billion. Yet the number of people who were given prescriptions in 2018 was just 204,700, which amounted to less than 20% of those estimated to have benefited from the medication.
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