For decades, the battle against AIDS followed a forked road: one led researchers to seek ways to stem the transmission, and the other had them trying to treat those with HIV, who are more susceptible. Oddly, it took this long for someone to entertain the idea of doing both.
Anyway, it’s in the works now, and the results are nothing short of impressive. The HIV Prevention Trials Network, an organization funded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health, recently found in a series of trials that a treatment can both suppress HIV levels and stop the patient from passing it on.
The trial, known as HPTN 02, was carried out on 1,763 couples in which one partner was infected with HIV and the other was not. Ninety-seven percent of the respondents were heterosexual, and the remaining 3% were homosexual; they came from 13 sites across Asia, Africa, and North and South America. They were selected in a way that the infected partner did not display enough symptoms to qualify for conventional treatment, partly so that side effects did not cloud the results and partly to avoid spurning drug-resistant strains.
Half of the couples were given conventional treatment following current protocol. The HIV-infected partners were given drugs only if their condition began to develop into AIDS or if their conditions fell below critical levels, measured according to the presence of a particular cell in their blood. Infected partners in the other half were given the drugs right away. All were taught …
