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NIAID Study (HPTN 052 Study) Suggests ART Reduces Risk of Transmitting HIV to Sexual Partners

May 2011

From AIDSinfo At-A-Glance Volume 7 Issue No. 20, May 13, 2011

Men and women infected with HIV reduced the risk of transmitting the virus to their sexual partners by taking oral antiretroviral medicines when their immune systems were relatively healthy … .

“The clinical trial, known as HPTN 052, was slated to end in 2015 but the findings are being released early as the result of a scheduled interim review of the study data by an independent data and safety monitoring board (DSMB). … The results are the first from a major randomized clinical trial to indicate that treating an HIV-infected individual can reduce the risk of sexual transmission of HIV to an uninfected partner. …

“HPTN 052 began in April 2005 and enrolled 1,763 couples … . The vast majority of the couples (97 percent) were heterosexual, which precludes any definitive conclusions about effectiveness in men who have sex with men. …

“The investigators randomly assigned the couples to either one of two study groups. In the first group, the HIV-infected partner immediately began taking a combination of three antiretroviral drugs. In the second group (the deferred group), the HIV-infected partners began antiretroviral therapy when their CD4 counts fell below 250 cells/mm³ or an AIDS-related event, such as Pneumocystis pneumonia, occurred. …

“In its review, the DSMB found a total of 39 cases of HIV infection among the previously uninfected partners. Of those, 28 were linked through genetic analysis to the HIV-infected partner as the source of infection. … Of the 28 linked infections, 27 infections occurred among the 877 couples in which the HIV-infected partner did not begin antiretroviral therapy immediately. Only one case of HIV infection occurred among those couples where the HIV-infected partner began immediate antiretroviral therapy. This finding was statistically significant and means that earlier initiation of antiretrovirals led to a 96 percent reduction in HIV transmission to the HIV-uninfected partner.”
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