DIAGNOSIS, PREVENTION & TREATMENT OF HIV
Many HIV-positive people are unaware that they are infected with the virus. Since donors may therefore be unaware of their infection, donor blood and blood products used in medicine and medical research are routinely screened for HIV. Modern HIV testing is extremely accurate. For instance, the chance of a false-positive result in the two-step testing protocol is estimated to be 0.0004% to 0.0007% in the general U.S. population.
Prevention
A course of antiretroviral treatment administered immediately after exposure, referred to as post-exposure prophylaxis, reduces the risk of infection if begun as quickly as possible. In July 2010, a vaginal gel containing tenofovir, a reverse transcriptase inhibitor, was shown to reduce HIV infection rates by 39 percent in a trial conducted in South Africa. Early treatment of HIV-infected people with antiretrovirals protected 96% of partners from infection. Testing post exposure is recommended initially and at six week, three months, and six months.
There is currently no publicly available vaccine for HIV or AIDS. However, a vaccine that is a combination of two previously unsuccessful vaccine candidates (ALVAC-HIV and AIDSVAX) was reported in September 2009 to have resulted in a 30% reduction in infections in a trial conducted in Thailand. Further trials of the vaccine are ongoing.
Treatment
There is currently no cure for HIV infection. Treatment consists of highly active antiretroviral therapy, or HAART. This has been highly beneficial to many HIV-infected individuals since its introduction in 1996, when the protease inhibitor-based HAART initially became available.Current HAART options are combinations (or "cocktails") consisting of at least three drugs belonging to at least two types, or "classes," of antiretroviral agents. Typically, these classes are two nucleoside analogue reverse transcriptase inhibitors (NARTIs or NRTIs) plus either a protease inhibitor or a non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitor (NNRTI).
Source: Wikipedia