270 Views Posted on 27-Jul-2010 under Health

Researchers from France and South Africa plan to begin a study of about 40,000 South Africans in 30 regions around the country to test a theory for reducing transmission of HIV, Bernard Hirschel, head of the HIV/AIDS unit of Switzerland's Geneva University Hospital, told reporters at AIDS 2010 on Wednesday, Bloomberg reports.
In half the regions, researchers will begin treatment "immediately for those who test positive. In the other half, they'll wait until the patients' immune systems deteriorate to a certain level, Hirschel said" of the five-year study, which is set to start this year, the news service writes. "If you apply this on a large scale, you could theoretically eradicate HIV by diminishing transmission," Hirschel said.
"The experiment is designed to see whether starting treatment straight away can reduce or eliminate transmission of HIV ... The World Health Organization recommends that patients not receive HIV drugs, which can have serious side effects, until their infection-fighting cells fall below a certain level.
The drugs lower HIV to undetectable levels in the blood, reducing patients' chances of transmitting the virus, studies have shown," Bloomberg reports, noting a 2008 mathematical model that found the spread of HIV could be reduced by 95 percent in hard-hit African countries if everyone with HIV started taking drugs immediately. "That so-called test-and-treat theory has been disputed in other mathematical models that say those projections are based on flawed on assumptions.