B.C.-made therapy the cornerstone of world's AIDS fight

published on July 19, 2010 in Vancouver Sun

By Carmen Chai

Vancouver researchers have become the first in the world to confirm that an aggressive treatment for HIV significantly cuts the number of people contracting the virus that causes AIDS.

For every 100 patients using the so-called highly active antiretroviral therapy, or HAART, scientists recorded a three-percent decrease in HIV diagnoses in British Columbia, said Julio Montaner, lead researcher and director of the B.C. Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS, which is affiliated with the University of B.C.

The United Nations HIV/AIDS program director, Michel Sidibe, hailed the research and said the results mean the UN is embracing HAART as the fundamental worldwide prevention strategy for AIDS.

The research was made public Sunday at the annual meeting of the International AIDS Society, in Vienna.

“Today is a big day for us in B.C. and Canada,” said Montaner.

“I don’t remember the last time a made-in-Canada strategy to address a global epidemic has taken this kind of initiative.

“We thought of it, modelled it, tested it in B.C. And now we have the United Nations embracing our proposal and making it the cornerstone of the global fight against HIV.”

HAART, a cocktail of three drugs taken daily, was first given in 1996 to stop HIV from progressing into AIDS, to extend life expectancy and to reduce HIV-related deaths.

The new research shows that the treatment also seems to have a secondary effect — a reduction in the emergence of new cases.

This is being credited to the fact that the cocktail lowers the viral load of those who are HIV positive to the point where they are less likely to transmit the virus to their partners.

Study investigators conducted a population-based report examining data from B.C. to look at the success of the HAART program.

They gathered data on the number of HIV tests done and new HIV diagnoses from the BC Centre for Disease Control while figures on viral loads, cell counts and HAART use from the HIV/AIDS centre were collected.

Results showed that between 1996 and 2009, the number of patients receiving HIV treatment increased from 837 people to 5,413, while the number of new HIV diagnoses in that same period fell drastically from 702 to 338 people, a 52-per-cent decrease.

Rates of sexually transmitted diseases and hepatitis C infections have increased during the past 15 years, which suggests these findings cannot be accounted for by decreasing sexual HIV risk behaviour, the study reported.

Montaner said HIV testing has steadily increased in B.C.

Previous results of mathematical models on the effectiveness of HAART have varied from predicting elimination of HIV to potential worsening of the epidemic. The study, funded by the U.S. National Institute on Drug Abuse, appears in the current Lancet medical journal.

Reprinted under license from the Vancouver Sun.

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