City Endorses New Policy for Treatment of H.I.V.

SABIN RUSSELL

Published: Sunday, April 4, 2010 at 5:16 a.m.
Last Modified: Sunday, April 4, 2010 at 5:16 a.m.

In a major shift of H.I.V. treatment policy, San Francisco public health doctors have begun to advise patients to start taking antiviral medicines as soon as they are found to be infected, rather than waiting — sometimes years — for signs that their immune systems have started to fail.

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Dr. Bradley Hare, an H.I.V. specialist, advised an H.I.V. patient about treatment options and when to start the drug cocktail.
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Theo Rigby for The New York Times

The new, controversial city guidelines, to be announced next week by the Department of Public Health, may be the most forceful anywhere in their endorsement of early treatment against H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS.

Ever since combinations of antiviral drugs were found to slow progression of the disease in the mid-1990s, doctors and patients have wrestled with the question of when to begin a lifetime regimen of costly and sometimes toxic medicines. The answer remains in dispute, but public health leaders here are now making a case for a change.