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• Posted December 2, 2025

Small Trial Shows Patients Controlled HIV Without Daily Meds For Months

A small but closely watched study is giving researchers new optimism in the search for long-term HIV control, and possibly a cure.

For the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) study, 10 people living with HIV took a mix of experimental immunotherapies, including an HIV vaccine. After months of the immunotherapy treatments, participants stopped taking their daily antiretroviral drugs that normally keep the virus under control.

Once antiretroviral medication was paused, six people had a slower and weaker return of the virus after several months, and one person even kept the virus under control for more than 18 months, researchers reported.

"It’s provocative, but I’ve been doing treatment interruption studies for 30 years, and this is unexpected and unparalleled," Dr. Steven Deeks, professor of medicine at UCSF and one of the study leaders, told The Washington Post.

Other experts agree that the findings are promising, but more studies with a control group are needed.

“I am very excited about the findings. The study, although small, will drive new directions in the field,” Sharon Lewin, director of the Doherty Institute at the University of Melbourne, told The Post in an email.

“This is something the field urgently needs,” she added.

About 40 million people worldwide are living with HIV, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). While current medications are highly effective, people must take them for life.

Tom Perrault, 60, had taken daily HIV medication since 2005 before joining the UCSF study. After receiving the research treatments, he stopped his daily pills in July 2021, The Post reported.

“It didn’t come back in July, didn’t come back in August, didn’t come back in September, didn’t come back in October,” Perrault told The Post. “All of a sudden, I was like: ‘My body is suppressing it. I think it’s working. This is exceeding their expectations.’”

His virus eventually returned that fall, but the experience gave him hope.

“I was surprised by the level of emotion,” Perrault said. “All of a sudden, I dared hope. You want to hope. What a gift this will be for the world if and when this would work.”

The two-year study required roughly 60 clinic visits and combined several immunotherapy strategies:

• An experimental vaccine designed to activate HIV-fighting T cells

• Two broadly neutralizing antibodies, which target HIV

• A drug to activate the immune system

• A final round of antibodies before stopping HIV medication

A 2022 study showed that most monkeys given a similar approach were able to control their version of HIV.

“The idea is that if you increase immunologic control of virus, then you might be able to prevent or slow viral rebound after you stop antiretroviral therapy,” Dan Barouch of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, who led the primate research, told The Post.

One early signal stood out: Folks who showed slower viral rebound had a quick response from a specific group of T cells when HIV began to come back.

“They were ready to pounce on the virus as it was coming out,” Dr. Rachel Rutishauser, an infectious-disease physician and co-leader of the UCSF study, explained.

“We’re not advocating that this is the therapeutic regimen to take into the clinic,” Rutishauser said. “We can start to learn — and how can we make the T cells better?”

Results from the trial were published Monday in the journal Nature.

More information

The World Health Organization (WHO) has more on HIV.

SOURCE: The Washington Post, Dec. 1, 2025