HIV Study Named Year's Best

Science taps a clinical trial that showed the benefits of antiretroviral treatment in HIV patients as 2011's breakthrough of the year.

Written byBob Grant

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Scanning electron micrograph of HIV-1 budding (in green) from cultured lymphocyte WIKIMEDIA COMMONS, CDC-C. GOLDSMITH

A long-term study that found a drastic reduction in HIV transmission rates when patients received early treatment with antiretroviral drugs rose to the top of Science's list of the year's best scientific breakthroughs. The study, published in an August issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, found that HIV-positive people are 96 percent less likely to transmit the virus to their heterosexual partners when they were treated with antiretroviral drugs early in the course of their infection.

Out of nearly 1,800 participating couples from across the world where one partner was HIV-positive and the other HIV-negative, 28 people became newly infected with the virus in the 4 years since the trial began. Only one of those new infections occurred in the group of couples ...

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Meet the Author

Bob Grant
From 2017 to 2022, Bob Grant was Editor in Chief of The Scientist, where he started in 2007 as a Staff Writer. Before joining the team, he worked as a reporter at Audubon and earned a master’s degree in science journalism from New York University. In his previous life, he pursued a career in science, getting a bachelor’s degree in wildlife biology from Montana State University and a master’s degree in marine biology from the College of Charleston in South Carolina. Bob edited Reading Frames and other sections of the magazine.
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