Steven Spencer, a 27-year-old “sexual health and gay community advocate” from Sydney, Australia who has been taking PrEP for five years, says he contracted HIV while using PrEP “on demand,” which is “a dosing strategy involving taking PrEP pills in line with a carefully-timed schedule before and after sex,” the Sydney Morning Herald reports.
Said Spencer to the newspaper: “I was in complete shock, as were my doctors. … What happened to me doesn't change the fact that PrEP is still the most powerful HIV preventative we have ever had. It is protecting hundreds of thousands of people from HIV in an empowering way, alongside effective treatment for people living with HIV.”
Andrew Grulich, program head of HIV Epidemiology and Prevention at the University of NSW's Kirby Institute, told the paper that “most of the HIV seroconversion cases identified had involved a virus that is resistant to the anti-viral medication contained in PrEP” and also said that “non-adherence” to the regimen was also a factor in many cases.
