Revolutionary HIV Treatment Prevents Virus Transmission from One Partner to Another

The new HIV treatment effectively blocks the transmission of the virus

(Mirror Daily, United States) – A recent study documented a treatment which managed to prevent the transmission of the HIV virus in a gay couple where only one of the partners is infected. This treatment managed to reduce the level of infection from the blood until it remained barely detectable.

If HIV levels are undetectable, the virus is no longer transmitted

For the study, researchers followed 358 gay couples from Thailand, Brazil, and Australia, where one of the partners was HIV-positive. This partner received the treatment in question, and then they kept the couples under close study between 2012 and 2016. In this period, the participants reported having unprotected anal sex for about 17,000 times. However, no virus was transmitted in any of the cases.

What the treatment did was reduce the levels of the HIV virus from the blood of the infected partner until it was undetectable. Researchers discovered this method was effective, as it resulted in no transmission of the virus to the healthy partner.

All studies on the subject reached the same conclusion

This comes as great news for gay couples with a different status of HIV infection. However, they should pay attention. For the treatment to work, the HIV-positive partner should remain under close medical supervision, and miss none of the doses of the medicine. This is the only way to make sure the virus stays at low levels and cannot be transmitted.

Researchers are proud of their results, as this is the first method which appears to apply in countries with both high and medium income. Although there are few related studies on the same subject, there is no evidence whatsoever of an HIV transmission when the virus levels in the blood were undetectable.

Therefore, a treatment which significantly reduces the viral load from one’s blood can prevent the transmission of the virus even in couples with a different HIV status. The revolutionary discovery has been presented during the IAS Conference on HIV Science, which took place in Paris.
Image Source: Wikimedia Commons

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Tara Hamilton

Tara has graduated from the University of Oregon, with bachelors degree in Spanish Literature in 2010. She lived in Miami for one year and travelled extensively before settling down in El Paso.