every drug has side effects therefore every time
you take a drug there are benefits and harms oftentimes this decision this
trade-off is entirely up to you if your blood pressure is too high you can take
a drug to lower it but to prevent heart attacks but this can also hurt your kidneys or make
you feel dizzy but what about an infectious thank you it turns out different people feel
different about this decision and so everyone should make their own decision
but what about an infectious dis
ease for an infectious disease your decision
also matters for other people's health and so we need to protect the
community and the population at Large as a postdoc at UCSF I studied the trade-offs
around the prevention of tuberculosis or TB worldwide one in four people are infected with the
TB germs these people are healthy but they have sleeping TV germs in their lungs and these germs
can wake up months or years later and cause active TB disease luckily there are treatments that can
prev
ent TB that will kill these sleeping TB germs ideally everyone would take this treatment
so we can eliminate TB so it's important for us to understand under which conditions
patients with prefer treatment or no treatment I use methods for market research to find out I surveyed people living with HIV in Uganda
who are at a high risk of developing TB even though one in three of
them will eventually die of TB only 88 of them were willing to
take the old six-month treatment but if we offer them
the new treatment the
new three-month treatment 99 would take it good so we really need to offer that new treatment by contrast in the US most people are at a
low risk of developing TB such as 0.5 percent I'm starting another survey to find out whether
people at a low risk would also be willing to take preventive treatment and if so we can eliminate TB
and is that compatible with individual preferences and values every drug has side effects and we
need to help people understand the trade-o
ffs and make the decision that's best
for them thank you [Applause]
Comments
Good talk
👍