Friday, January 15, 2010

New Study Raises Concerns About HIV-Drug Resistance

A supply of antiretroviral drugs is prepared for free distribution to HIV patients at the Integrated HIV Service Unit at the Cipto Mangunkusumo government hospital in Jakarta, Indonesia. Romeo Gacad / AFP / Getty

From Time Magazine:


Last January a team of scientists at the World Health Organization (WHO) published a study in the British medical journal the Lancet making the audacious claim that the tools already exist to end the AIDS epidemic. Doctors have long noted that antiretrovirals — the drugs commonly used to treat HIV — are so successful at suppressing the number of viruses in an infected patient's blood that they can render a person no longer contagious. Using mathematical models, the researchers claimed that universal HIV testing followed by the immediate treatment of newly infected patients with antiretroviral drugs could eliminate the disease from even the most heavily infected populations within 10 years.

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