treatments

• antiretroviral drugs can reduce the viral load in the body to an ‘undetectible’ level

  this means the patient is unable to pass HIV to others
• antiretroviral drugs cannot remove the virus from the body, but they slow the replication by blocking the reverse transcriptase enzyme
• pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP)

  • HIV negative individuals take antiretrovirals before coming into contact with HIV to reduce their risk of becoming infected