Flashback: Anthony Fauci on the HIV Epidemic 10 Years Ago

This year, the annual Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI) was held in a virtual format due to the COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak. For the first in our video coverage series for 2020’s meeting, we’re revisiting a feature from 10 years ago on the future of HIV research, which is not so different from the most pressing research issues today.

MedPage Today: Treatment as prevention has become a cornerstone of trying to end the HIV epidemic, with “U equals U” (undetectable equals untransmittable), where research has now proven virally suppressed people do not transmit the virus to their partners.

Fauci: But the real underscoring that I did in the talk was to talk about prevention. There are a couple of ways that we’ve got to get prevention and that is really the answer. We can’t, even though we have good treatment that’s not in a vacuum alone going to do it. So the three ways that I spoke about treatment as prevention were microbicides. First of all, we failed in the microbicide trials because microbicides have not worked because they weren’t antiretrovirals in the microbicide. They were more of a detergent. A big trial just recently failed just a few months ago.

Prevention and early PrEP research

Fauci: So the next trials that are ongoing are trials that use a microbicide like a vaginal gel, but incorporate into that a long acting antiretroviral. So we’re looking forward to the results of those trials. Secondly is what’s called prep or preexposure prophylaxis. We know it works with other diseases like malaria, number one. Number two, we know postexposure prophylaxis works and we know that mother to child transmission prevention works. We’re doing a number of clinical trials to test the concept of whether we can actually prevent infection by preemptively treating people who are practicing high risk behavior.

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During the Canada Post strike announced September 25, 2025, the following measures will be undertaken to minimize service disruption to BC-CfE clients and providers.

  • The BC-CfE Laboratory has transitioned to private courier for delivery of outgoing reports and documents. Results required urgently can be faxed upon request. (Lab Contact Information: Phone 604-806-8775; FAX 604-806-9463)
  • The BC-CfE Drug Treatment Program (DTP) will fax outgoing forms and documents to the provider’s office. (DTP Contact Information: Phone 604-806-8515; FAX 604-806-9044)
  • St. Paul’s Hospital Ambulatory Pharmacy has transitioned to private courier for delivery of medications. We recommend requesting medication at least 2 weeks in advance in case of delivery delays, particularly to rural/remote parts of BC. (Contact Information: Phone 1-800-547-3622; FAX 604-806-8675)

During the Canada Post strike, we recommend that documents be faxed or couriered to our sites, versus utilization of regular mail service

The BC-CfE Laboratory is streamlining reporting processes for certain tests in order to simplify distribution and record-keeping, and to ensure completeness of results. Beginning September 2, 2025, results for the ‘Resistance Analysis of HIV-1 Protease and Reverse Transcriptase’ (Protease-RT) and ‘HIV-1 Integrase Resistance Genotype’ tests will be combined into a single ‘HIV-1 Resistance Genotype Report’.
For more details and example reports, please click on the button below