Things you need to know about the HIV breakthrough
In recent years, the word undetectable has become omnipresent in most conversations about HIV.
From laboratories and medical conferences to bathhouses and social media hashtags, the idea of undetectable viral load has changed the world of sexual safety.
We now know that people who take regular antiretroviral medications long enough can reduce the amount of HIV in their blood to the point that they can’t transmit the virus to anyone else.
In a 2016 study, researchers followed almost 1,000 heterosexual couples and male same-sex couples who regularly had condomless sex and were in a serodiscordant relationship (that is, a relationship where one person has HIV and the other does not). The results were clear: not a single person contracted HIV from their positive partner over the course of the study.
A follow-up study that focused on male same-sex couples was published in July and came to the same conclusions: researchers couldn’t find a single case of transmission when the HIV-positive partner was taking medication to reduce his viral load.
These results were endorsed by the world’s leading HIV scientists, and trumpeted from the rooftops by activists using the #UequalsU hashtag.