Breakthrough Treatment Stops Transmission Of HIV Through Sex, Study Says

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) – A landmark discovery has been made in the battle to cure HIV.

According to a new study, published in the medical journal The Lancet, a treatment of anti-retroviral drugs have prevented HIV transmission among gay men during unprotected sex.

Over an eight-year period, researchers monitored 1,000 gay male couples in which one partner was HIV positive.

The study found that there were no new transmissions of the disease to the HIV negative partner during sex.

The treatment, known as antiretroviral therapy (ART), reportedly reduced the transmission of the virus by 96 percent.

"It has taken considerable time and massive effort to prove that antiretroviral drugs can prevent HIV through treatment or as PrEP," researchers said in a press release on the study.