TY - JOUR T1 - “Elite controllers” provide clues to keeping hiv infection in check AU - Hampton T Y1 - 2012/07/25 N1 - 10.1001/jama.2012.8463 JO - JAMA SP - 328 EP - 329 VL - 308 IS - 4 N2 - But for a minority of persons—about 1 in 300—antiretroviral medications aren't necessary. Some of these individuals have been infected with HIV for more than 30 years without developing progressive disease, and they have maintained low to undetectable levels of the virus in their blood without ever having taken antiretroviral drugs. While an untreated patient with HIV may have a viral load of more than a million HIV particles per milliliter of blood at the time of acute infection, elite controllers maintain an HIV viral load below 50 virus particles per milliliter of blood. Another group of untreated persons called viremic controllers maintain a viral load level ranging between 50 and 2000 particles. SN - 0098-7484 M3 - doi: 10.1001/jama.2012.8463 UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.1001/jama.2012.8463 ER -