The potential benefits and risks of fighting STIs with doxycycline

Fenit Nirappil:

So those were the populations that were studied in the research that found DoxyPEP effective. And the reason you’re looking at gay men are more precisely men who have sex with men and trans women is because rates of STIs are higher in that group. And I also want to be clear, one of the reasons here is not just because of differences in sexual behavior, but because when you have a smaller pool of people, and a smaller pool of sexual partners, when one person has an STI, it’s easier for that STI to spread.

So the idea here is that they want to limit DoxyPEP to people who are at highest risk, because DoxyPEP, as you mentioned earlier can also have unintended consequences and that’s because it’s an antibiotic. In the medical profession, you want to try and limit the use of antibiotics, because it can lead to drug resistance, both for individuals and for the population as a whole.