Antiretroviral Treatment as Prevention

The numbers that define the scope of the HIV–AIDS pandemic are staggering: 30 years, 60 million infections, 30 million deaths. We have not been defenseless in this fight, however. The introduction of potent combination antiretroviral therapy in 1996 and the public health approach to HIV treatment in resource-limited settings in 2002 have changed the course of the epidemic.1,2 In parallel with treatment, the use of antiretroviral drugs as a prevention tool has been a focus from the beginning of the antiretroviral-therapy era, with the hallmark achievement being the prevention of mother-to-child transmission of the virus. The result has been . . .