NIAID's HIV/AIDS Research Program

Although progress has been made in the global fight against HIV/AIDS, the epidemic continues to devastate the United States and the international community with 56,300 new HIV infections each year in the U.S. and an estimated 33 million people living with HIV worldwide. As the leading U.S. government institute for HIV/AIDS research, NIAID is committed to conducting the research necessary to successfully end the fight against HIV/AIDS.

Through laboratories and clinics on the NIH campus in Bethesda, Md., and a vast network of supported research at universities, medical centers and clinical trial sites around the globe, NIAID is working to better understand HIV and how it causes disease, find new tools to prevent HIV infection including a preventive vaccine, develop new and more effective treatments for people infected with HIV, and hopefully, find a cure.

HIV Medicines as Prevention

A key focus of NIAID’s HIV prevention research is examining whether providing a daily dose of antiretroviral medicines to people who are not infected with HIV but who are at high risk of becoming infected can prevent HIV infection. This strategy — known as pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) — is based on the concept that blocking HIV’s ability to multiple once someone is exposed to the virus may prevent the infection from taking hold. NIAID has tested a similar strategy that has successfully prevented mother-to-child HIV transmission. Further, antiretroviral drugs have been successfully used to thwart HIV infection in health care workers and other employees occupationally exposed to the virus when the drugs were taken within 48-72 hours of exposure and continued for nearly a month.

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