Anti-retrovirals could halt Aids spread in five years

[Guest guest]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8526690.stm

Page last updated at 04:26 GMT, Sunday, 21 February 2010

Anti-retrovirals could halt Aids spread in five years

By Gill

Science reporter, BBC News, San Diego

Anti-retroviral treatments (ARVs) could stop the spread of Aids in South Africa

within five years, say scientists.

Dr said that by providing HIV positive patients with these drugs

could stop the spread at a cost of around $2-3 billion per year.

The drugs reduce the amount of virus patients have in their body fluids.

Dr called for this approach at the annual meeting of the American

Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in San Diego.

Dr , a leading figure in the field of HIV research, is based at the

South African Centre for Epidemiological Modelling and Analysis (Sacema) in

Stellenbosch.

He said the scale of the problem in South Africa was " enormous " .

Success story

He added: " We have 30 million people infected with HIV and two million people

dying each year. "

" The tragedy is that the disease continues unabated. The only real success story

is the development of these extremely effective drugs that keep people alive and

reduce their viral load by up to 2000 times. They become close to

non-infectious.

" We should be looking at using the drugs to reduce transmission. "

He said that if clinical trials started now, all of the HIV positive people in

South Africa could be on ARV treatment within five years.

This approach, he stressed, should be complementary to the search for an Aids

vaccine. An effective vaccine, he said, was still a long way away.

Dr commented: " Even with a vaccine, in South Africa we would still have

all of these people who are already infected - so what do we do for them? "

Mayer, professor of medicine at Brown University in the US state of

Rhone Island, agreed that treating patients early with ARVs was a matter of

" public health " .

Dr said a few clinical trials were already beginning in North America

and in Africa.

The US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases is planning a trial

in New York and Washington - in districts that have an HIV positive population

at a similar level to African epidemics.

" We need to get answers [from these trials] quickly. That will help us move

forward, " he stressed.

" We could break the back of the epidemic. If we can do it, I'm confident it will

work. "