PLoS ONE (Jan 2014)

Pre-exposure prophylaxis for the prevention of HIV infection in high risk populations: a meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials.

  • Junjun Jiang,
  • Xiaoyi Yang,
  • Li Ye,
  • Bo Zhou,
  • Chuanyi Ning,
  • Jiegang Huang,
  • Bingyu Liang,
  • Xiaoni Zhong,
  • Ailong Huang,
  • Renchuan Tao,
  • Cunwei Cao,
  • Hui Chen,
  • Hao Liang

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0087674
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 9, no. 2
p. e87674

Abstract

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BackgroundNearly ten randomized controlled trials (RCTs) of pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) have been completed or are ongoing worldwide to evaluate the effectiveness of PrEP in HIV transmission among HIV-uninfected high risk populations. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the role of PrEP to prevent HIV transmission through a Mata-analysis.MethodsA comprehensive computerized literature search was carried out in PubMed, EMbase, Ovid, Web of Science, Science Direct, Wan Fang, CNKI and related websites to collect relevant articles (from their establishment date to August 30, 2013). The search terms were "pre-exposure prophylaxis", "high risk population", "HIV infection", "reduction", "relative risk" and "efficacy". We included any RCT assessing PrEP for the prevention of HIV infection in high risk populations. Interventions of the studies were continuously daily or intermittent doses of single or compound antiretrovirals (ARVs) before HIV exposure or during HIV exposure. A meta-analysis was conducted using Stata 10.0. A random-effects method was used to calculate the pooled relative risk (RR) and 95% confidence intervals (CI) for all studies included.ResultsSeven RCTs involving 14,804 individuals in high risk populations were eligible for this study. The number of subjects in the experimental groups was 8,195, with HIV infection rate of 2.03%. The number of subjects in the control groups was 6,609, with HIV infection rate of 4.07%. The pooled RR was 0.53 (95% CI = 0.40 ∼ 0.71, PConclusionThese results show that PrEP is an effective strategy for reducing new HIV infections in high risk populations.