Can You Get HIV When Taking PrEP?

There have been cases around the world where people have acquired HIV while taking PrEP.

By far the biggest risk for becoming HIV positive while taking PrEP is not taking the medication. We know that the efficacy of this drug is dropping dramatically when less than four tablets are taken each week.

For this reason, we do recommend that people take the medication as recommended. That could be daily PrEP or as intermittent PrEP.

Worldwide, there have been some cases of people who have acquired HIV whilst reliably taking the medication.
Of these cases, two of the cases were people who were infected with a rare strain of HIV that was resistant to both of the drugs in Truvada.
This is actually extremely rare, and when you compare that to the tens of thousands of people who have been protected against HIV these are extremely rare events.

There have been two cases where people acquired HIV that was not a resistant strain.

There is ongoing research into these particular cases to learn about what has happened.

What we can say is that when taken as directed, the efficacy of PrEP is high with a risk reduction of HIV infection by about 99%.

We want people to be able to decide with the full information when considering PrEP.

The key understanding is that when taken reliably, PrEP is extremely effective at preventing HIV infection.

Resource: Has anyone ever contracted HIV despite taking PrEP as directed?