A study on a new HIV prevention drug has shown promising results. The study conducted at Kaiser Permanente in San Francisco showed that all those participants who took the blue pill, Truvada, remained infection-free.

The study included over 600 high-risk participants, and most of them were gay men. Before the study started, all the men were healthy. They were put on everyday routine of the drug as pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP).

Jonathan Volk, physician and epidemiologist at Kaiser Permanente San Francisco Medical Center and lead author of the study, said, “The study is the first to extend the understanding of the use of PrEP in a real-world setting and suggests that the treatment may prevent new HIV infections even in a high-risk setting”.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), it has been found that PrEP reduce HIV infection risk by about 92% when it is taken consistently, but it wasn’t that effective when taken inconsistently. A British study, PROUD, that also included men who have sex with men showed that PrEP reduced the risk of HIV infection by about 86%.

The study, published in Clinical Infectious Diseases, showed that every participant in the study remained HIV-free and didn’t get infected during the 2.5 years of observation. Kimberly A. Koester and Robert M. Grant, researchers from the University of California-San Francisco, said the study has many cheering. Results of the study are promising, but still there are some questions that should be answered, said the researchers.