Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what assessment he has made of the implications of recent research on the effect of pre-exposure prophylaxis for reducing the spread of HIV.

In the United Kingdom, the PROUD study (http://www.proud.mrc.ac.uk/), co-sponsored by the Medical Research Council, University College London and Public Health England, is an open-label trial of pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) use among most-at-risk human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) negative gay and other men who have sex with men (MSM).

A major aim of the study is to determine whether PrEP reduced new HIV infections while taking into account changes in risk behaviour and adherence. The study has announced interim results showing that the use of PrEP is highly protective against HIV acquisition:

http://www.proud.mrc.ac.uk/PDF/PROUD%20Statement%20161014.pdf.

However, we must await the full analysis before we can assess the impact that PrEP may have on reducing the spread of HIV in the MSM population.