End of Aids ‘in sight’, says landmark research

Aids could be eliminitated, new research has concluded, after finding that men with HIV can fully suppress the virus by taking antiretroviral drugs, and cannot infect their partner.

The study examined nearly 1,000 gay male couples who had sex without condoms, and where one partner had HIV he was treating with antiretrovirals.

The results mean that if everyone with HIV were fully treated, there would be no further infections - and the end of Aids is “in sight,” says The Guardian.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

“Our findings provide conclusive evidence for gay men that the risk of HIV transmission with suppressive antiretroviral is zero,” said Alison Rodger, a professor at University College London, who co-led the research.

She said this “powerful message” could help end the HIV pandemic by preventing transmission of the virus in high-risk populations.

The Independent hails the news as a “major breakthrough” which gives hope that the virus can “one day be eliminated”. The Daily Mail says that the same findings emerged from an earlier study that looked at HIV transmission risk for heterosexual couples.

Antiretroviral therapy is a combination of drugs that stops HIV replicating in the body. Although it cannot cure HIV, it can reduce the amount of virus to undetectable levels in the blood.

Deborah Gold, chief executive of the National Aids Trust, said healthcare workers and the general public must both be better educated on the issue.

“There needs to be a much better understanding of how HIV is and isn't transmitted, and the fact that treatment stops transmission, in the NHS and beyond,” she told the BBC. “We think this is vital to addressing stigma."

Researchers say that about 472 cases of HIV are likely to have been prevented by the study alone. In total, the couples reported having anal sex without condoms a total of 76,088 times.

Since the start of the Aids epidemic in the 1980s, more than 77 million people have been infected with HIV. Almost half - 35.4 million - have died of Aids.