This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility:

Taking medicine to prevent HIV might seem a good reason to feel confident about being able or eligible to give blood. Yet people taking pre-exposure prophylaxis, known as PrEP, cannot donate while using it and must wait for three months after their last dose before doing so.

PrEP is taken by people without HIV to reduce their chance of acquiring the virus. According to the NHS, daily PrEP is around 99% effective when taken correctly.

But if someone acquires HIV while taking PrEP, the medicine can make the infection harder to detect. If an infected donation passed through testing undetected, it could transmit HIV to someone receiving the blood. Donation rules provide an additional safeguard against that possibility.

Research I carried out with colleagues found drugs used in PrEP in some blood donations in England. These medicines have other uses, so their presence cannot confirm why someone took them. Our findings also cannot establish whether donors understood the restrictions, and we did not demonstrate HIV transmission through donated blood.

Our findings raise a question for blood services: how can they explain the restrictions clearly while supporting people's use of effective HIV prevention?

If someone acquires HIV while taking PrEP, the medicine can limit the virus's ability to multiply, reducing the amount in their blood. It can also delay or weaken the production of antibodies, proteins the immune system makes in response to infection.

Source link