San Francisco: The antiretroviral drugs that revolutionised the care of people with Aids are on the threshold of a new life — as tools to prevent infection in individuals and brake the epidemic in populations as a whole.
Studies are under way testing whether periodic use of the drugs, either as pills or as vaginal or rectal gels, can prevent transmission of HIV in high-risk sexual encounters. At the same time, it's becoming clear that the incidence of HIV infection declines over time in places where most infected people know their status and are on treatment, and thus are less likely to pass the virus to others.
Description of these effects at a big Aids conference here is likely to spur a further swing of the treatment pendulum toward early and widespread treatment of HIV infection.
"Arguably the greatest progress in the Aids epidemic has been in the development of highly effective drugs," said John Mellors, an Aids researcher at the University of Pittsburgh and chairman of the 17th Retrovirus Conference.
Antiretroviral drugs are already being given to babies born to infected mothers immediately after birth and during breast feeding to greatly reduce the chance of infection.
