07.08.2023
HIV is sexually untransmittable when viral load is undetectable
"Oral HIV self-testing" by Alain Amstutz, University of Basel. Photo: SNSF Scientific Image Competition/Flickr.com; © CC-BY-NC-ND: Alain Amstutz/

The Lancet "In 2008, the Swiss National AIDS Commission (Commission fédérale pour les problèmes liés au sida) controversially made the claim that people infected with HIV who are adhering to an effective antiretroviral therapy (ART) do not transmit HIV. Subsequently, a modelling study in 2009 gave rise to the concept of treatment as prevention and then the UNAIDS 90-90-90 campaign that suggested that if countries could attain 90% HIV testing in their population, ensure that 90% of those individuals were on ART, and 90% of those were fully suppressed, then sexual HIV transmission would drop to low levels. But it was only after the results of the HPTN 052 study in 2016 that the secondary HIV prevention benefits of ART were fully seen."