According to a new major trial that could change the way millions of HIV patients are treated, drugs to treat HIV should begin at the moment of diagnosis.
Currently, people only receive antiretroviral therapy only when their white blood cell levels drop. However, in a new United States led study, researchers found that early treatment was actually beneficial. HIV patients responded so well, in fact, that the study itself was cut short. The United Nations Aids agency has called for everyone to get immediate access to the drugs.
Currently, around 35 million people are living with HIV and more than 2 million begin antiretroviral therapy each year. For many years treatment options for people suffering from HIV were very limited. The discovery of drugs to attack the virus has profoundly changed the way the disease is treated. However, there has been fierce debate about when treatment should actually begin.
According to guidelines set forth by the World Health Organization, treatment should only start when there are fewer than 500 white blood cells in every cubic millimeter of blood.
However, in a trial that began in 2011 and was scheduled to end in 2016 on 4,685 people in 35 countries that was organized by the US National Institutes of Health, compared this approach with beginning treatment immediately.
During an interim analysis of the data, researchers found that cases of AIDS, deaths and complications such as kidney or liver disease, had already been cut in half by early treatment. All the patients on the trial are now being offered antiretroviral drugs.
"We now have clear-cut proof that it is of significantly greater health benefit to an HIV-infected person to start antiretroviral therapy sooner rather than later" Director of NIH's National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Anthony Fauci says. "Moreover, early therapy conveys a double benefit, not only improving the health of individuals but at the same time, by lowering their viral load, reducing the risk they will transmit HIV to others."
"These findings have global implications for the treatment of HIV."
"Every person living with HIV should have immediate access to life-saving antiretroviral therapy" says Michel Sidibe, Executive Director of UNAids. "Delaying access to HIV treatment under any pretext is denying the right to health."
Researchers now expect that the results of this study will alter how patients living with HIV are treated across the world, granting them access to potentially life saving drugs much earlier than before and potentially greatly impacting the state of their health in the future.
