New HIV PrEP guidelines call for clinicians to talk with patients about prevention meds

CDC now advises all clinicians to talk to their patients who are sexually active, including adolescents, about HIV preexposure prophylaxis (PrEP) at least once and to prescribe the prevention medication to anyone who requests them.

“PrEP is part of good primary case,” said Demetre Daskalakis, MD, CDC’s director of the Division of HIV/AIDS Prevention. “Listening to people and what they need, as opposed to assessing what you think they need, is a seismic shift in how PrEP should be offered.”

The new CDC recommendations are part of the updated U.S. Public Health Service’s PrEP prescribing guidelines, marking their third revision since FDA approved the first HIV prevention medication in 2012.

The guidelines also discuss how to prescribe and monitor an injectable version of PrEP, which FDA may approve as early as this month. Additionally, the guidelines streamline monitoring lab levels for the current daily regimen by checking creatinine clearance levels twice per year in people aged 50 years and older, and once a year in those younger than age 50 years who take the oral medication.

Daskalakis said that should ease the burden of monitoring PrEP patients for health care professionals.