AIDS Study Marks Prevention Breakthrough

Antiretroviral Drugs Are Shown to Make Patients Far Less Infectious

Treating AIDS patients with antiretroviral drugs makes them strikingly less infectious, researchers said Thursday, in a landmark finding that is likely to reinvigorate efforts to slow the pandemic.

The results were so overwhelming that an independent panel monitoring the research recommended the results be released four years before the large, multi-country study had been scheduled to end.

"This new finding convincingly demonstrates that treating the infected individual—and doing so sooner rather than later—can have a major impact on reducing HIV transmission," said Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which provided most of the funding for the study.