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Huge Study Finds Drugs Stop HIV Transmission

posted by Fnord666 on Sunday May 05 2019, @05:26PM   Printer-friendly
from the looking-up dept.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

An end to the Aids epidemic could be in sight after a landmark study found men whose HIV infection was fully suppressed by antiretroviral drugs had no chance of infecting their partner.

The success of the medicine means that if everyone with HIV were fully treated, there would be no further infections.

Among nearly 1,000 male couples across Europe where one partner with HIV was receiving treatment to suppress the virus, there were no cases of transmission of the infection to the HIV-negative partner during sex without a condom. Although 15 men were infected with HIV during the eight-year study, DNA testing proved that was through sex with someone other than their partner who was not on treatment.

“It’s brilliant – fantastic. This very much puts this issue to bed,” said Prof Alison Rodgers from University College London, the co-leader of the paper published in the Lancet medical journal. Earlier studies have also shown the treatment protects heterosexual couples where one partner has HIV.

She added: “Our findings provide conclusive evidence for gay men that the risk of HIV transmission with suppressive ART [antiretroviral therapy] is zero. Our findings support the message of the international U=U campaign that an undetectable viral load makes HIV untransmittable.

“This powerful message can help end the HIV pandemic by preventing HIV transmission, and tackling the stigma and discrimination that many people with HIV face.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 06 2019, @04:16PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 06 2019, @04:16PM (#839673)

    How do they determine these linkages? What is the accuracy of this process and how did they determine that?

    Closest I saw is:

    Correct reconstruction of the transmission direction when the donor transmits one lineage is highly probable (>95%), even 3–4 y after transmission and with only 20 sampled sequence clones, when the donor has been infected for several years (Fig. 4). However, this probability decreases substantially when the number of sampled clones becomes small or the donor has only been infected for a short time. Our simulations show that with only five clones there is only a 50% chance to see the correct reconstruction after about 5 y. If the donor had been infected for only 6 mo at time of transmission, the probability of correct transmission direction reconstruction quickly decreases; even with 100 clones from the donor the correct reconstruction drops to 50% chance at about 5 y after transmission. Again, the probability of inconsistent reconstruction, that is, when it would seem as if the recipient infected the donor, was
    https://www.pnas.org/content/113/10/2690 [pnas.org]

    So the accuracy can range from 1-95% depending on the situation.