People Living With HIV Tend To Suppress The Virus Below 1,500 In The U. S.

The viral load above 1,500 represents the point above which the HIV is considered significantly infectious since there have been few documented cases of transmission from people with viral loads below that level.

This indicator is interesting because it is possible to estimate the average risk of the virus transmission among the population.

Recently, researchers from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that between 2000 and 2014, the time their viral loads spent above this threshold of significant infectiousness dropped by 72 percent.

The researchers also found that for every ten years of increasing age, patients with HIV on antiretroviral therapy (ARVs) were 9 percent less likely to have a viral load above 1,500. Those younger than 35 who were on ARVs were 50 percent more likely to lack such viral suppression than those older than 50. Those with public health insurance were 24 percent more likely to have a viral load above that threshold compared with those with private health insurance. Blacks were 19 percent more likely than whites to have a viral load above 1,500.

Findings were presented at the 2017 Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI) in Seattle.