Researchers plan to test about
40,000 South Africans for HIV in the biggest trial yet of a
theory for halting transmission of the AIDS-causing virus.
In a five-year study set to start this year, scientists
from France and South Africa will screen everyone in 30 South
African regions, said Bernard Hirschel, head of the HIV-AIDS
unit of Geneva University Hospital in Switzerland. In half the
regions, they’ll start treatment immediately for those who test
positive. In the other half, they’ll wait until the patients’
immune systems deteriorate to a certain level, Hirschel said.
The experiment is designed to see whether starting
treatment straight away can reduce or eliminate transmission of
HIV, which infects 2.7 million people and kills 2 million every
year. The World Health Organization recommends that patients not
receive HIV drugs, which can have serious side effects, until
their infection-fighting cells fall below a certain level. The
drugs lower HIV to undetectable levels in the blood, reducing
patients’ chances of transmitting the virus, studies have shown.
“If you apply this on a large scale, you could
theoretically eradicate HIV by diminishing transmission,”
Hirschel told reporters at the International AIDS Conference in
Vienna today.
A 2008 study led by researchers at the Geneva-based WHO
suggested the spread of HIV in hard-hit African nations could be
cut by 95 percent in a decade if all those infected started
taking medicines immediately. That so-called test-and-treat
theory has been disputed in other mathematical models that say
those projections are based on flawed on assumptions.
The researchers have been planning the trial for two years,
Hirschel said.
To contact the reporter on this story:
Simeon Bennett in Singapore at
sbennett9@bloomberg.net
Rate this Page