The future of microbicides

Abstract

There is an urgent need to develop vaginal microbicides to empower women to better control their own sexual life and to protect themselves against HIV and other sexually transmitted infections (STIs). Prevention of STIs with its 330 million cases a year would have a great global health impact. Because of their anatomy, women are up to 8 times more susceptible than men to STIs including HIV. Women who can't negotiate condom use with their male partners have no means of protecting themselves from these infections. In the last few years, especially after the recent failures of several microbicides in Phase III trials, there was increasing pressure from those favoring the use of a more targeted approach to introduce marketed antiretroviral drugs (ARVs) into microbicides. This Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP) concept which targets only HIV using specific ARVs contrasts with the primary approach of broad spectrum microbicides which aimed at offering universal protection against several sexually transmitted pathogens. However, before using ARVs as PrEP for HIV prevention, there are still many important issues to consider. In this article, we compare both strategies, while reviewing the last 15 years of microbicide research and its future.