Doctors call for AIDS treatment to start earlier

British doctors are calling for HIV-infected patients to receive earlier treatment than is presently the norm.

Researchers have just published evidence that they say makes it imperative for patients to be treated before their immune systems crash below a commonly recognized threshold of damage inflicted by the AIDS virus.

Highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) began to overturn the automatic death sentence associated with AIDS after this powerful cocktail of drugs was introduced in 1996.