Treatment as prevention

The results of the groundbreaking HPTN 052 trial show that people living with HIV and taking antiretroviral drugs were 96% less likely to transmit the virus to their partners. The findings end a long-standing debate over whether antiretrovirals could provide a double benefit by treating the virus in individual patients while simultaneously cutting transmission rates. The results prove that they could. This was the first step in establishing treatment as prevention.

The journal Science names the study the most important scientific breakthrough of 2011.