Drugs currently being used to treat AIDS could slow or even stop transmission of the virus itself, two major US conferences were told last week.

Speaking at the AAAS conference in San Diego, Brian Williams of the South African Centre for Epidemiological Modelling and Analysis pushed for anyone infected with HIV – the virus which causes AIDS – to be placed on anti-retroviral drugs. This would severely curtail their infectiousness.

“We could effectively stop transmission within five years,” says Williams (CNN).

Williams co-authored a paper last year, also pushing for anti-retroviral use against HIV transmission. He told the AAAS conference that the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases is to run a pilot study of the idea and another trial is due to begin soon in South Africa (Times).

Just up the coast from the AAAS, in San Francisco, another conference has also been hearing about the drugs that Williams rates so highly.

“Arguably the greatest progress in the AIDS epidemic has been in the development of highly effective drugs,” John Mellors, of the University of Pittsburgh, told the 17th Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (Washington Post). “This is now being applied not only to help infected individuals but as a public health approach to the whole epidemic.”

At the same conference – which Mellors chaired – another use of anti-retrovirals was also touted. John Moore, of Weill Cornell Medical College in New York, says they could be used in a microbicide (conference abstract). To date, attempts to produce a compound that can stop HIV transmission in a cream or gel have failed.

“The next wave of compounds is all going to be based on antiretroviral drugs,” says Moore (Reuters).

Image: HIV-infected T-cells / Tom Folks, NIAID