Researchers at Brigham and Women's Hospital have set a path toward ending the AIDS epidemic in the United States by 2025. Photo by Kevin Dietsch/UPI |
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May 15 (UPI) -- Researchers at Brigham and Women's Hospital have found a potential ambitious path to end the AIDS epidemic in the United States by 2025.
The study by Brigham and Women's Hospital in collaboration with Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, used prevention surveillance data to model rates of HIV incidence, prevalence and mortality to set targets to decrease to new infections to 21,000 by 2020 and to 12,000 by 2025 to mark a transition toward the end of the HIV/AIDS epidemic.
Researchers used surveillance data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from 2010 to 2013 to model key indicators including incidence and prevalence rates, transmission rates, death rates and more through 2025.
Using goals set by the U.S. National HIV/AIDS Strategy of 90 percent of people living with HIV would know their status, 90 percent would receive quality care and 90 percent of people on antiretroviral therapy would achieve viral suppression, researchers estimated the potential path of the epidemic if those goals were met.
"Achieving these targets will require a sustained and intensified national commitment to ending the epidemic," Dr. Robert Bonacci, of the BWH Department of Medicine, said in a press release."But if the U.S. does achieve a reduction to 12,000 new HIV infections by 2025, it could mark an important turning point in the U.S. HIV epidemic: a decline in the total number of people living with HIV in the U.S., and the beginning of the end of the U.S. AIDS epidemic."
Researchers used mathematical modeling and found the United States could achieve a 46 percent reduction in HIV incidence by 2020 and a nearly 70 percent reduction in HIV incidence by 2025 if the United States implements the 90/90/90 HIV program framework by 2020 and a 95/95/95 framework by 2025.
The HIV transmission rate would decrease from 3.53 in 2013 to 0.98 by 2025 with HIV-related deaths decreasing from 16,500 in 2013 to 12,522 in 2025.
The study was published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.
