A drug which has been used to treat patients battling with HIV is now being used in a program to help HIV-positive patients to prevent the spread of the infection. Using the drug, Truvada, patients are better able to prevent the infection, found researchers.

Some doctors use the program, called pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), to help individuals who are at high risk of getting infected with the HIV. It has been found that when patients took Truvada, they were able to prevent the infection.

Dr. Rupa Patel, a PrEP program leader at Washington University School of Medicine, said that they are unable to stop HIV, but they have this method that can help to cut down the spread of the infection.

She further said that they are still years away from finding a perfect treatment for the disease, but for the first time, they have got a hope that is drastically reducing the number of infections very quickly.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported that the use of Truvada for HIV prevention has been increasing since July of 2012 at the time when it was first approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as a once daily pill for that purpose.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has also given approval for using Truvada for PrEP.

As per experts, Truvada works by stopping a particular enzyme called HIV reverse transcriptase. Once HIV reverse transcriptase is blocked, HIV is unable to replicate in the body, they added.