LOS ANGELES (MCT) — As the U.S. Food and Drug Administration weighs approval of a radical new method of AIDS prevention — a prescription pill taken once a day — advocates say the results of experimental trials in sub-Saharan Africa argue strongly for the drug’s adoption in the United States.

The pill was developed to treat people already infected with HIV. But studies published Wednesday by The New England Journal of Medicine demonstrate that it can also prevent heterosexual transmission of HIV, the most common mode of contagion in Africa.