Newswise — The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is set to suggest doxycycline as a prevention tool. Doxycycline is a common antibiotic used to treat bacterial STIs, which the CDC is now proposing be used after an unprotected sexual encounter by gay and bisexual men and transgender women as a means of preventing an infection.
The strategy, called doxy-post exposure prophylaxis (PEP) – or doxy-PEP – will be used to prevent bacterial STIs like chlamydia, gonorrhea, and syphilis. A similar approach has been used for years to help prevent HIV through the use of antivirals in the form of PEP and pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP).
“Prevention programming for HIV has advanced our understanding of how biomedical interventions in the form of pharmaceuticals can be used effectively to prevent disease, not just treat disease,” says Perry N. Halkitis, dean and Hunterdon Professor of Public Health and Health Equity at the Rutgers School of Public Health. “This is most evident in the development of PrEP and PEP approaches with HIV antivirals. Doxycycline has been used to treat bacterial STIs for years. Now the power of the drug is being harnessed to prevent the onset of STIs through the use of doxycycline as PEP. Given the escalating rates of STIs in the USA, this approach provides us with another powerful tool to prevent the spread of these infections.”