States across the U.S. have either implemented or are considering measures that limit access to life-saving medications for tens of thousands of low-income people living with HIV. The moves, experts warn, are likely to lead to economic and public health crises.
According to new data published this week by the National Alliance of State and Territorial AIDS Directors (NASTAD), 17 states and D.C. have already taken steps to cut costs for their AIDS Drug Assistance Programs (ADAP), while five others are considering similar measures.
Since 1996, federally funded ADAPs have helped low-income, uninsured, and underinsured people afford HIV and AIDS medication, primarily through federal grants via the Ryan White Comprehensive AIDS Resources Emergency Act of 1990.
But as NASTAD’s report notes, “Federal funding for ADAPs has remained relatively unchanged over the last decade, while client enrollment and healthcare costs, including prescription drug, insurance premium, and cost-sharing expenditures, have continued to increase.” According to nonprofit health policy research group KFF, congressionally allocated funding for ADAPs “has not kept pace with inflation, even before accounting for enrollment growth and increased costs.”
According to both NASTAD and KFF, the expiration of enhanced premium tax credits for the purchase of insurance through the Affordable Care Act marketplaces is another key factor driving up costs for ADAPs.
“Effectively, programs are being asked to do more with less federal funding,” Lindsey Dawson, associate director of HIV policy at KFF, told the New York Times.
That has led to 10 state ADAPs reporting budget deficits for the current fiscal year, while 19 ADAPs expect to face deficits in the upcoming fiscal year, according to NASTAD.
NASTAD reports that five states — including Pennsylvania, Kansas, Delaware, and Rhode Island — have already lowered income eligibility for the ADAP.
By far the most drastic change took effect in Florida on Sunday. The state’s move to reduce income eligibility for its ADAP from 400% of the federal poverty level to 130%. That means people living with HIV in Florida who make more than approximately $20,500 annually — down from around $64,000 prior to the change — are now ineligible to receive ADAP assistance for medication that can cost more than $5,000 per month. By one estimate, 16,000 people living with HIV in Florida are now at risk of losing access to HIV/AIDS medications.
Other states, including Arkansas, Louisiana, New Jersey, Virginia, and Washington, are similarly considering changes to financial eligibility criteria. Others have or are considering other measures, including reducing formularies (the list of drugs covered), annual spending caps, restricting or ending health insurance assistance, and implementing recertification requirements that will likely lead to disenrollment, according to KFF. NASTAD reports that Arkansas, Louisiana, and New Jersey are also considering implementing waitlists for assistance.
Such cost-cutting measures “could leave growing numbers of people with HIV ineligible for safety-net services,” according to KFF.
Esteban Wood, director of AIDS Healthcare Foundation, which is suing to block Florida’s ADAP changes, warned the New York Times this week that the changes represented not only a “moral disaster,” but would likely lead to both public health and economic disasters. HIV medications not only keep people living with the virus healthy, they also make it essentially impossible to transmit it, and cutting off access to those meds will inevitably lead to an increase in new infections. The Times also notes that if people begin rationing their pills, the likelihood that the virus becomes resistant to medication increases.
The untold costs of such outcomes will have to be absorbed by other parts of the U.S. public health system, according to the Times.
Tez Anderson decided to get tested for HIV after he moved to San Francisco in 1986 at the age of 25 and began dating his new boyfriend. When the results came back positive two weeks later, the doctor told Anderson he had 18 to 24 months to live. It was two days after his 26th birthday.
Devastated by the news, Anderson began planning his death. But decades later, he remained relatively healthy while watching many friends and acquaintances die of HIV-related illnesses. As he approached age 50, Anderson realized, “Oh, my God, I’m going to be an old man with AIDS. What am I going to do?”
“I had not put any money away in a 401K or savings or retirement account — dead people don’t need retirement accounts,” Anderson told LGBTQ Nation. “I didn’t make any plans for being old — I was making plans to die young.”
He began having panic attacks, awful nightmares, and feelings of depression and anger. He kept imagining himself as homeless. He also began lashing out at people close to him and worried that AIDS had somehow damaged his brain. Simultaneously, he went on prolonged medication treatments that gave him constant diarrhea and difficulty sleeping.
“It felt like I was having a nervous breakdown,” he told LGBTQ Nation. “I guess in some regards I was, but it was all around the idea that I am going to live, which most people would think seems illogical: to have a panic attack because I’m going to live.”
Having long had an interest in psychology and having undergone lots of therapy, Anderson began researching trauma and its possible impact on his life. While speaking to other gay men who had also survived the height of the pandemic, Anderson gradually came to understand that he and many others had been experiencing features of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
He personally didn’t like the word “disorder,” however, because — considering all the death, illness, uncertainty, and stress they had experienced while caring for dying friends and facing widespread anti-gay stigma — their feelings seemed quite natural and logical to him.
Eventually, he coined the term AIDS Survivor Syndrome (ASS) and, in 2013, decided to hold a town hall at the local LGBTQ+ center so that other long-term HIV survivors could share their experiences.
He expected about 40 people to show up — over 250 attended. They wrote their feelings and experiences onto giant pieces of paper on the walls. Over the evening, they all realized that they were not the only ones with these feelings, and “that there was community in that survival,” Anderson said.
Anderson is now 66 years old and the executive director of Let’s Kick ASS, the nation’s first and largest group dedicated to improving the lives of long-term HIV survivors.
Around the time of the group’s first town hall, Anderson began collaborating with Dr. Ron Stall, a longtime HIV researcher at the University of Pittsburgh, who had been examining the Multicenter AIDS Cohort Study (MACS), a long-term study tracking the psychosocial and biological effects of HIV infection in over 7,300 gay and bisexual men since the late 1980s.
Together, the men identified the most common features of ASS: extreme emotional pain, trauma, and depression; survivor’s guilt and low self-esteem; suicidal ideation; anger, over-guardedness, and chronic anxiety; social isolation; fear of aging; and difficulty envisioning a future.
While ASS shares some features of PTSD and complex-PTSD — both of which are psychological illnesses listed in the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) — both Anderson and Stall say that neither diagnosis encompasses all of ASS’ symptoms, a variety of traumas caused by the nearly 40-year duration of the AIDS pandemic.
While ASS is real, it’s not a widely recognized or diagnosable mental disorder. It’s unclear how many people with HIV survived the height of the AIDS epidemic and how many might currently suffer from ASS (though Stall found that 22% of gay and bi men who survived the AIDS epidemic reported experiencing three or more symptoms of ASS, including grief over lost partners). This makes it all the more necessary for Anderson and other activists and care professionals to raise social awareness about it.
Towards that end, Anderson also founded HIV Long-Term Survivors Awareness Day, held every June 5, to honor, support, and raise awareness of the challenges they face. Through these and other efforts, ASS is gaining wider recognition.
“If you had HIV, you couldn’t go through a time as traumatic as the 80s and 90s without major life-changing ramifications,” said Michael Gottlieb, the pioneering doctor who was among the first to report on a cluster of diseases that would later be known as AIDS.
Gottlieb described ASS as an experience of “depression, isolation, economic hardship, careers put aside, and a feeling that society had no idea what you had been through and didn’t much care,” adding, “Going forward, [society at large] was dismissive of your relevance.”
Since coining the term, Anderson says the most eye-opening experience has been the large number of people who thank him in meetings, conferences, and on social media for explaining what they’re living through. They tell him that he helped naturalize their experience and erase the stigma and abnormality attached to it. He also notes that one doesn’t have to be LGBTQ+-identified or even HIV-positive to experience ASS; straight HIV-positive Black women and other HIV-negative survivors from the ’80s and ’90s can exhibit symptoms.
Greater awareness about ASS is particularly important now, Anderson says, as the current presidential administration has cut research and programs into HIV awareness and prevention. At the same time, Anderson says that most medical authorities are primarily interested in the physical effects of HIV and HIV medication on aging bodies, and most mental health professionals may have never heard of ASS, leaving those who struggle with it to the internet to find more information and support.
Anderson is still figuring out his future: He has developed multi-drug resistance to various HIV-treatments and currently takes three pills a day and a shot every six months just to keep his viral load undetectable. He and other people with ASS have experienced rapid aging and deterioration, making them look much older than they actually are. The isolation caused by ASS makes it feel immensely healing, he said, whenever people acknowledge them with genuine interest, kindness, assistance, and care.
Despite all the hardships, he thinks ASS has given him and its other survivors a special gift.
“For a population like long-term survivors who have lived so close to death for now 30 or 40 years, we have something to offer. We’re a resource about life and death, and our view of the world, I think it’s valuable. We’re not just people who need help. We are people who are restored,” he said.
“I want people to feel like this experience meant something for them and for their experience in the world, and how they’re a repository of the knowledge that most people don’t have,” he continued. “Many of us have, at some point, become comfortable with the idea of dying. It has been difficult: a lot of therapy, a lot of crying…. Living with one foot in the grave and one foot in the living is a unique perspective, and it helps us be sort of death doulas, if you will.”
HIV patients and advocates in Florida are reeling after the Department of Health’s sudden move to cut off about 12,000 people from receiving affordable HIV medication, as reported by the Tampa Bay Times.
The Department utilized an “11th hour” legal loophole on Tuesday, just one day before a hearing in a lawsuit filed against the state by AIDS Healthcare Foundation over changes to its AIDS Drug Assistance Program (ADAP).
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Louise Wilhite-St. Laurent, an attorney representing AHF, was one of many outraged citizens, and called the move “legal subterfuge” at a press conference on Wednesday.
AHF filed the suit in January after the state announced its plans to enforce new eligibility limitations for recipients of the program that helps low-income patients living with HIV obtain affordable, lifesaving medications. Previously, people earning 400 percent of the federal poverty level (about $60,000 a year) were eligible for the program, but now the eligibility limit has been reduced to 130 percent of the poverty level. This means only individuals with an annual income of about $21,000 or less will continue to receive assistance.
With the new limitations going into effect Sunday, March 1, those being cut from the program have been left in a state of shock and scrambling for solutions.
“The stress this is causing for many of us living with HIV right now is indescribable,” Michael Rajner, an HIV advocate and longtime ADAP client, told the press. “The fear, the panic of not knowing where to turn to [within] a health care system in this state that’s falling apart.”
However, Eduardo S. Lombard, an attorney representing the Department of Health, said the “suggestion of subterfuge is just theatrics,” and the state claims the cuts were necessary due to a lack of funding for the program.
But AHF is already fighting back. On Thursday, the foundation filed a complaint challenging the use of the emergency rule, stating there was no “immediate danger to the public health, safety, or welfare” in order to justify the sudden change in eligibility. Tom Meyers, general counsel for AHF, said the organization is planning on fighting the move with “all due speed.”
House and Senate Democrats also spoke out against the questionable utilization of the emergency rule. Sen. Shevrin Jones called the move “reckless” and added, “Florida should not be the state that turns a preventable budget issue into a preventable public health emergency.”
For two weeks, Ablé Sanchez didn’t leave their house in South Minneapolis.
“[I was] forced into survival mode,” Sanchez told Uncloseted Media and Rewire News Group (RNG). “I felt like there was an invisible wall [to the outside world] that I couldn’t cross unless I really wanted to put myself in a place where there was a chance that I might not be able to come back.”
Queer and Mexican American, Sanchez was afraid of being targeted by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) presence in their neighborhood, even though they are a U.S. citizen.
Photo by Liam James Doyle for Uncloseted Media and Rewire News Group.
“Every day is a risk,” they say, adding that even if they have paperwork, if they fit the profile, they are a target, making it scary to go even to work or the grocery store.
Sanchez, a 30-year-old sexual health care educator, has been taking oral PrEP, the daily preventive medication for HIV, for over a decade. But the mounting stress of ICE raids has made it harder to keep up with dosing.
“A missed dose here and there pushed me to make the appointment [for something more sustainable],” they say.
Photo by Liam James Doyle for Uncloseted Media and Rewire News Group.
Sanchez says they felt like somebody would have their back at their local clinic. It was only a 10-minute drive from where they worked, they knew its staff from previous visits and community outreach, and they could count on finding Spanish-speaking staff and providers of Latino heritage. But not everybody has had that same experience accessing care.
Photo by Liam James Doyle for Uncloseted Media and Rewire News Group.
Since ICE’s Operation Metro Surge began in early December, an increasing number of Latino patients in Minnesota are delaying or canceling what can be lifesaving care for the prevention and treatment of HIV.
These findings are particularly alarming for Latino communities, who, as of 2023, are 72% more likely than the general U.S. population to be diagnosed with HIV. And while overall infections have decreased, cases among Latinos increased by 24% between 2010 and 2022.
“I’m very concerned that there is going to be a sharp uptick in transmission,” says Alex Palacios, a community health specialist in the Minneapolis area.
In a January 2026 declaration as part of a lawsuit seeking to end Operation Metro Surge in the days following Renee Nicole Good’s killing, the commissioner of the Minnesota Department of Health said HIV testing among Latino populations has “dropped dramatically” and that “although grantee staff continue to go into the community to promote and provide testing, people are not showing up.”
Local clinics are reporting the same thing. The Aliveness Project, a community wellness center in Minneapolis specializing in HIV care, told Uncloseted Media and RNG they have seen more than a 50% decrease in new clients. The clinic serves a large number of Latino and undocumented clients, and while it usually sees 750 people walk through their door each week, according to providers, it reported seeing 100 fewer people each week since December.
Red Door, Minnesota’s largest STI and HIV clinic, has had a “modest uptick” in no-shows and missed appointments since December.
What Happens When Treatment Stops
Today, there are multiple medications available that work to prevent HIV and dozens that treat it once a person tests positive. Many people who consistently take their medication have such low levels of the virus that they can’t transmit it through sex. But becoming undetectable requires patients to stay on their medication; otherwise, the virus replicates and mutates, weakening the immune system and increasing the risk of life-threatening infections.
“If patients aren’t on their medicines consistently, HIV can learn about the medication and become resistant to them. When this happens, the medicine will not work for the patient, and the new resistant virus could potentially be passed on to others,” says George Froehle, a physician assistant and provider at Aliveness Project. “Medication adherence is one of the most important aspects of HIV care.”
To maintain care and prevent dangerous, untreatable strains from spreading in Minnesota, providers at Aliveness Project have begun delivering medication to patients when possible, offering telehealth when they can, and pausing routine lab work to limit in-person appointments.
“The most important thing we can do from a public health perspective is to keep people undetectable so they don’t transmit HIV,” Froehle says, adding that providers in other cities targeted by ICE will need to make plans for missed injection visits, pivot to telehealth and prepare their teams for the “trauma that can occur.”
Sanchez understands the risks of inconsistent treatment, which is why they opted for the injectable preventative medication.
“I have a lot of risk [to HIV in my community],” Sanchez says. “With so much uncertainty about the future and whether HIV care will remain stable, I realized I couldn’t let this opportunity pass.”
But injectable HIV treatments are commonly dosed at two weeks to six months apart, and the medication must be administered in a clinic—a setting many patients are avoiding, according to providers.
“They have a two-week window” to get their shots, according to Froehle, who added that because patients are afraid to come in person, they have had to transition people off of their injectable HIV treatments. This has caused patients to return to oral HIV treatments without the testing they would normally receive had ICE not been in Minneapolis. “[Oral treatments] weren’t super successful [for these patients] to begin with and that’s why they were on injectables.”
Oral HIV medications, too, must be taken consistently to work. In response, providers have urged patients to have their pills with them at all times in case they get deported or detained.
The caution is not unfounded. Federal immigration facilities have a history of denying adequate medical care to people living with HIV, despite internal standards that require them to comply. Since 2025, at least two men living with HIV have been denied access to their medication in a Brooklyn jail, according to lawsuits obtained by THE CITY. One man said he was only given his medication after his lips broke open and he developed an open pustule on his leg. And in January 2025, another man died of HIV complications while in ICE custody in Arizona.
Beyond being detained without proper medication, patients are at risk of being deported to countries with limited access to HIV care, like Honduras and Venezuela, experts say.
“A lot of men [from Venezuela] told me they left because it wasn’t safe to be gay there and because they struggled to access HIV care,” says Froehle. “It’s a little heartbreaking to see new folks not only face the threat of deportation, but to places where they didn’t feel safe medically or identity-wise.”
“Some of these patients will die in their home country,” says Anna Person, the chair of the HIV Medicine Association. “It’s a death sentence.”
A ‘Cascading Disaster’
While ICE’s presence is threatening the infrastructure of HIV care that Minneapolis has built over decades, experts say there has always been a blind spot in HIV care for the city’s Latino community.
Vincent Guilamo-Ramos, executive director of the Institute for Policy Solutions at the Johns Hopkins University of Nursing, describes HIV in Latino communities as a “cascading disaster,” the result of years of compounding inequities.
“There’s been an invisible crisis among Latinos that hasn’t gotten traction,” he says. “The numbers have consistently gone up in terms of new infections, while nationally they’ve gone down. … That should be a big alarm.”
Numbers are rising because structural barriers and stigma are preventing Latinos from receiving care. A 2022 report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that between 2018 and 2020, nearly 1 in 4 Hispanic people living with HIV reported experiencing discrimination in health care settings. Lack of representation among providers, language barriers and deep-rooted medical mistrust further complicate access to care, according to Guilamo-Ramos.
Beyond the medical system, stigma within Latino communities can be equally damaging. According to Human Rights Campaign data, more than 78% of Latino LGBTQ youth reported experiencing homophobia or transphobia within the Latino community in 2024.
Sanchez outside of Aliveness Project. Photo by Liam James Doyle for Uncloseted Media and Rewire News Group.
Sanchez agrees that stigma and bias are already massive barriers to care, citing the strict gender norms and Catholic beliefs many Latino communities hold. They say ICE’s presence is threatening already delicate access to HIV care.
“This has caused so much damage to people,” Sanchez says. “Not being able to access your health care appointments is such a stab in the side. … Being able to navigate any of these things in normal circumstances already has so much difficulty to it.”
Palacios, who is Afro-Latine and living with HIV, says the heightened ICE presence is worsening barriers that have long undermined the Latino community’s access to HIV care.
“The horizon has always been stark and dim,” they say. “And this just feels like one more thing to address and to fight back against.”
Sliding Backwards
Navigating HIV care is becoming more difficult across the board, as the federal government has decimated HIV funding, compromising decades of progress made in the fight against the virus since Donald Trump retook office just over a year ago.
In February 2026, three months into Operation Metro Surge, the Trump administration proposed slashing $600 million in HIV-related grants, targeting four blue states, including $42 million for Minnesota programs. A federal judge has temporarily blocked the cuts.
“This would completely decimate and gut all of our HIV prevention,” says Dylan Boyer, director of development at Aliveness Project. “That’s the reality that we live in.”
“We have all the tools, and yet we are staring down this rollback of infrastructure and research dollars, prevention efforts, treatment efforts, that are going to put us squarely back in the 1980s,” says Person, a national HIV expert who grew up in Minnesota. “[There] seems to be no other rationale for that besides cruelty, to be quite frank, since there’s no scientific reason for it.”
Person says that this mending will take time, especially between the medical community and patients, since HIV providers can have a “very fragile” relationship with their clients.
“It takes, sometimes, years to build that level of trust. And I do worry that folks are just going to say, ‘I don’t feel safe here anymore. The system does not have my best interest at heart, and I’m not coming back,’” she says. “This is not something that you can flip a switch and everything will go back to normal.”
“We need to hold our federal government accountable, particularly HHS, [and] we need to ensure that HIV funding remains intact,” Guilamo-Ramos says, adding that in order to lower rates of HIV in the Latino community, there should be more specialized efforts: such as bilingual and culturally aligned health care providers, community-based outreach programs co-located where risk is highest, trust-building initiatives to address medical mistrust, mobile clinics, and targeted programs to re-engage patients who have fallen out of care.
Aliveness Project’s patient numbers have increased in the last few weeks as the ICE operation has waned, but the clinic staff is keeping “a watchful eye” and is having “difficulty reaching folks who are understandably scared.”
“Our biggest focus right now is reconnecting with people through our outreach so no one has a lapse in their HIV medications or prevention care,” Boyer, of Aliveness Project, says.
For Sanchez, seeing providers who speak Spanish and are of Latin heritage at Aliveness Project built enough trust for them to reach out and make an appointment despite the risks. Sanchez feels optimistic about their new injectable prevention strategy with the support of their clinic.
“There’s many places where you can receive care here in the Twin Cities where you might not see your skin tone. … There’s still a lot of health care professionals that unfortunately carry bias. … Aliveness is the opposite of that,” they say. “Seeing that representation and knowing someone has that cultural context of how to meet you in moments of sensitivity, it’s crucial.”
The cultivate program offers a unique opportunity for people with HIV to develop essential leadership skills, including understanding leadership styles, building relationships, and effectively engaging in local health planning. The program aligns with current efforts to enhance community involvement in HIV care systems, addressing the pressing need for informed and active participation in health policy decisions.
The Cultivate ToT program is structured across three levels:
**Individual Level**: Focuses on personal development and professional skills.
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Upcoming sessions include:
– Virtual: April 7–10, 2026 | 12:00 PM – 5:00 PM ET daily
– Application Deadline: March 2, 2026
– New York City : June 9–11, 2026 | 9:00 AM – 5:00 PM ET daily
– Applications reviewed on a rolling basis
– Kansas City ToT: August 18–20, 2026 | 9:00 AM – 5:00 PM CT daily
– Applications reviewed on a rolling basis
Interested individuals are encouraged to apply promptly to secure a spot in this transformative program. For more information, please contact the Cultivate team at cultivate@aidsunited.org. For media inquires, contact communications@aidsunited.org.
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AIDS United’s grantees and members serve communities representing more than 96% of the U.S. HIV epidemic. The organization has supported more than 600 organizations across 43 states, Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. For more information, visit www.aidsunited.org.
Black people in the U.S. aren’t just more likely to have HIV — they’re more likely to be criminalized for it.
Black Americans accounted for about 38 percent of new HIV diagnoses and 39 percent of people living with HIV in 2023, according to a report from the Williams Institute, despite making up around 12 percent of the population.
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Black women had the highest HIV diagnosis rate at 19.6 per 100,000, which is about 11 times the rate for white women at 1.8 per 100,000. Black boys and men ages 13 to 24 accounted for 47 percent of all new diagnoses among youth, while white boys and men made up just three percent.
Even with higher rates of infection, Black Americans are less likely to be on medications that treat HIV, with just 64 percent receiving care and 53 percent virally suppressed. They are also less likely to have health insurance, as 12.3 percent of Black adults ages 19 to 64 did not have health insurance in 2024, compared to 6.8 percent of white adults.
Black Americans are more likely to be criminalized for their HIV as well, as they are often subjected to “heightened surveillance, arrest, and conviction within the criminal legal system,” according to the report. In 64 percent of states analyzed, they faced higher rates of arrest than their share of people living with HIV. For example, Black people in California were 6 percent of the state population and 18 percent of people living with HIV, but 39 percent of HIV-related arrests.
They’re also more likely to face harsh post-conviction penalties like sex offender registration. In Tennessee, Black people were 17 percent of the state’s population and 55 percent of people living with HIV, but 74 percent of people on the sex offender registry with an HIV-related conviction.
“Most HIV criminal laws were enacted before effective HIV treatment and prevention tools became widely available,” said Nathan Cisneros, director of the HIV Criminalization Project at the Williams Institute. “In recent years, there has been a push to reform or repeal these laws as policymakers and the public increasingly recognize that these laws can discourage testing, increase stigma, and deepen disparities — especially for Black Americans.”
Nearly 45 years after the first HIV diagnosis, science is closer than ever to a cure for the virus that causes AIDS — but we’re not there yet, researchers say.
While perhaps a dozen people worldwide have been declared free of the virus, those results haven’t been replicated widely, and treatments for some involve continuing therapies or procedures, like stem cell and bone marrow transplants, that aren’t feasible for widespread use.
So far, there is no “magic bullet” to cure HIV for good. But scientists are making rapid progress on several fronts and say a cure is within reach. Here’s a roundup of where the latest progress stands.
A golden “supertherapy” that gives HIV a one-two punch
A study from the Federal University of São Paulo (UNIFESP), published in August, details how a team of researchers in Brazil succeeded in eliminating HIV from a patient’s body for 78 consecutive weeks with a “supertherapy”, achieving the result with a combination of medications alone and without stem cell transplants or gene therapy.
The study combined potent antiretroviral drugs with innovative compounds including auranofin, a gold salt, that were designed to both activate and eliminate viral reservoirs of HIV while also stimulating the immune system to destroy infected cells in a one-two punch at the virus.
“The patient benefits not only from drug treatment but also from the ability to reduce the viral load to the lowest possible level. The lower the viral load, the closer the patient gets to a cure,” lead investigator Ricardo Sobhie Diaz, director of the Retrovirology Laboratory at UNIFESP told Medscape.
Self-replicating “Stemmy” CD8 cells could help defeat the virus
While now-common antiviral drugs (AVRs) knock back levels of HIV in both blood and tissues, they don’t overcome one major obstacle for an HIV cure: The stubborn “reservoirs” of cells that harbor dormant viral DNA in the body. When people stop taking the drugs, the virus almost always resurges within weeks.
In two independent studies at the University of California at San Francisco and the Ragon Institute of Mass General Brigham, researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Harvard zeroed in on a class of white blood cells known as memory T cells, studded with CD8 receptors, structures on the cellular surface that are essential to immune defense.
Both studies found that precursors to these “killer T cells” are strongly tied to long-term control of HIV after treatment was stopped in some study participants. The precursors have a stem cell–like quality, and they more readily made copies of themselves when the virus started to return.
Stimulating the production of these “stemmy” CD8 cells “might be the key to getting control [over HIV] in more than the small percentage of people who are currently achieving it,” the Ragon Institute’s David Collins told Science magazine.
Steve Deeks, co-leader of the UCSF study, said those cells “may be the magical biomarker we need for a cure.”
A 3D medical illustration showing an HIV retrovirus targeting T-cells. | Shutterstock
A “kick and kill” strategy that may have actually cured one woman
A years-long study in Rwanda has yielded promising results with a strategy that researchers call “kick and kill.”
“HIV doesn’t live in our blood, it lives in reservoirs, whether in the lymph nodes or the liver or the brain, so you need to kick it out” in order to kill it, Krista Dong, an assistant professor also with the Ragon Institute, told NPR in August.
In the study, 20 young women on antiviral therapy for an average of seven years were asked to pause the drugs, allowing the HIV lurking in those reservoirs to emerge.
Researchers flushed it out of hiding with a unique drug called vesatolimod, followed a week later by a one-time infusion of broadly neutralizing antibodies (bNAbs). Those antibodies were predicted to bind to the virus and summon immune cells to eliminate it.
By trial’s end, four women remained in remission. One would later experience a viral rebound, while two resumed AVR’s, one to ensure a safe pregnancy and the other because a new job precluded her ability to receive regular monitoring.
More than two years after stopping medication, one woman remains HIV-free and off treatment. She could be cured.
“Novel vaccines” can train the immune system to kill HIV
In tandem with research on a cure for HIV, an HIV vaccine is a priority for scientists. So-called “novel vaccines” are key to that effort.
Two research teams reported in May that HIV vaccine approaches — aimed at training the immune system to produce specialized antibodies against the virus — have taken steps forward, POZ magazine reports.
Both studies showed that different engineered immunogens — substances that trigger a specific immune response in the body — could inspire production of precursor immune cells with the potential to produce those same broadly neutralizing antibodies (bnAbs) introduced in the Rwanda study to kill off diverse strains of HIV.
“We’ve now shown in humans that we can initiate the desired immune response with one shot and then drive the response further forward with a different second shot,” William Schief, PhD, of Scripps Research, said of the institute’s study of 18 participants in South Africa and Rwanda. “These trials provide proof of concept for a stepwise approach to elicit custom-tailored responses — not just for our vaccine but for the vaccine field at large, including non-HIV vaccines.”
That second shot, or boosting strategy, is designed to guide the immune response along the path toward bnAb production. All those who received both the primer and booster ended up developing antibody responses — most showed “elite” responses with multiple mutations linked to bnAb development.
“What really surprised us was the quality of the immune response we saw after just two shots,” Schief said. “We didn’t anticipate it would be that favorable.”
The Florida Department of Health is reversing its funding cuts to a program that provides HIV medication for low-income individuals, but only until they can do it legally.
The department published a notice Tuesday backtracking its decision to gut the AIDS Drug Assistance Program after supposedly failing to find $120 million in the state budget to cover it. Instead, the state will attempt to go through the formal rule-making process in order to make the cuts after a lawsuit from the AIDS Healthcare Foundation accused officials of violating the law.
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“The Department’s action makes clear that legal processes have not been followed. Floridians will now have a say in what happens to this program and its effect on them,” Esteban Wood, AHF Director of Advocacy & Legislative Affairs, said in a statement. “It will also provide needed transparency, as the Department has not shown why it needs to make these harmful changes, and show how it now has a claimed $120 million deficit. This program should be fully funded to continue the care needed by thousands across Florida.”
The ADAP helps provide medication to those making up to 400 percent of the Federal Poverty Level ($62,600 or less). Under the proposed cuts, it would only cover those making up to 130 percent of the poverty level ($20,345), impacting over half of the more than 30,000 enrolled in the program.
While the state claims it can’t find the money for the program, a December investigation from the Miami Herald and Tampa Bay Times found that the Ron DeSantis administration diverted more than $35 million in taxpayer funds to defeat two constitutional amendments on the ballot in 2024. The amendments, which would have legalized recreational marijuana and overturned the state’s six-week abortion ban, each fell short of the 60 percent supermajority required to pass, receiving 56 percent and 57 percent, respectively.
Democratic Party Chair Nikki Fried previously told The Advocatethat it is “absolutely unconscionable to think that a state of Florida or any government in the United States at this moment, with this amount of research and the advances that we have, either was intentionally or as a consequence of intentional actions, giving tens of thousands of individuals potentially a death sentence.”
“We have the damn money. The damn money is in the state of Florida,” Fried said. “They were able to spend $500 million building Alligator Alcatraz with no big contracts. We are still in a state of emergency for now almost two and a half years. They have the money. They can put the money in the coffers. They’re choosing not to.”
I’ve never taken comfort in the phrase, “HIV isn’t a death sentence anymore.” Yes, the phrase is meant to honor the hard-won victories achieved by HIV activists so that current generations of newly HIV-positive people could live long and fulfilling lives without fear, but the slogan is only as true if we have access to medication and social services.
The truth is that 4,496 U.S. residents died of HIV-related illnesses in 2023. Of them, 24% were women, 30% were over 55 years old, 43% were Black, and 56% lived in the South, where homophobia, lack of sex education, and poverty run rampant. And the current political situation will only increase those numbers.
It’s now more important than ever to learn lessons from past generations of HIV activists, understand the challenges presently facing today’s HIV advocates, and to forecast the promises (and perils) of future HIV developments in our country.
That’s why LGBTQ Nation’s February 2026 Issue examines the past, present, and future of HIV activism. It’s an issue that affects everyone — whether you yourself have HIV or know someone who is. And, in commemoration of Black History Month, many of our stories will elevate Black voices and experiences to share often-overlooked experiences in the struggle against HIV.
Our cover story this month will look back at the history of Black HIV activism through an anti-racist lens with the assistance of Dr. Aishah Scott, a professor of Black studies and health sciences who is writing a book about the AIDS epidemic in urban Black America.
A cultural piece will examine groundbreaking films about Black people living with HIV and why they remain culturally significant today. We’ll look at how the current administration’s HIV policy is affecting Black communities, how advocates are combating HIV criminalization laws that disproportionately harm Black queer men, and report on a recent roundtable of leading Black HIV activists on the challenges ahead.
Several of our pieces will also focus on women, another oft-overlooked community still impacted by the epidemic, including tales of the lesbians who bravely cared for queer men during the epidemic’s worst days; a look at Zelda Rubenstein, the celebrity ally who helped raise awareness of HIV at a time when few celebrities publicly spoke about it; and an assessment of how HIV continues to impact women today.
Our edition will also provide clear-eyed reasons for hope as well, examining the astonishing stories of people who’ve been cured of HIV, the role that injectable PrEP will play in drastically reducing new infections, and the latest developments in the continued race for an HIV vaccine and cure.
The stakes remain high, and we’re at a crossroads: The federal government wants to turn back the clock, but it’s facing headwinds from visionary activists fighting for a more humane future.
We only arrived at this moment because of the generations of queer HIV activists and researchers before us — many of whom were forced to innovate and create solutions for community care when the government couldn’t have cared less.
It’s this humanity and vision that can see us through to a future where HIV is just another manageable illness and healthcare is for everyone.
The federal government is negotiating lower Medicare prices for a popular once-daily pill that treats HIV and prevents infection.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said Tuesday it seeks to lower Medicare costs for 16 medications by negotiating with their manufacturers. Among them is Biktarvy, a drug taken after HIV exposure — known as a post-exposure prophylaxis — to prevent HIV infection as well as a treatment for those living with HIV. Gilead Sciences makes it.
Usage of the drug has risen significantly since it was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 2018. More than 100,000 Medicare enrollees used Biktarvy between November 2024 and October 2025, according to Medicare officials.
But increased prescription has meant greater cost. The federal government spent more than $3.9 billion on the drug that same year as part of Medicare Part B and D plans. Meanwhile, Biktarvy brought in $13.4 billion for Gilead in 2024, according to Reuters.
The federal government can now negotiate with drugmakers on Medicare prices for higher-cost drugs like Biktarvy, thanks to a provision of former President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act.
The new negotiations could lower Medicare costs for Biktarvy and several other drugs, including Botox and the diabetes medication Trulicity. Any effect would not be immediate because the negotiations occur in multiple rounds.
The Inflation Reduction Act passed Congress in 2022 without support from any Republican lawmakers, but Tuesday’s announcement means its drug negotiation provisions are being put to use under President Donald Trump.
Mehmet Oz, the Trump-appointed administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said the goal of the new negotiations is to benefit residents.
“For too long, seniors and taxpayers have paid the price for skyrocketing prescription drug costs,” Oz said in Tuesday’s announcement. “This approach delivers real savings while strengthening accountability across the program.”
Lower prices for the first 10 drugs negotiated under the Inflation Reduction Act took effect this year, Reuters previously reported.
