Jade Ghosn and colleagues studied HIV-positive men who have sex with men who were successfully on ART and had undetectable blood viral loads to assess the semen HIV-1 status of this population. The study found that among 157 HIV-positive patients on combination ART with viral loads below 50 copies/mL for at least 6 months (median 6.6 years) and without overt symptoms of genital infection, semen and blood were collected twice in the same month from each patient, and 304 semen specimens were collected, of which 23 had detectable viral loads, accounting for 7.6 (The average viral load of semen was 1.5 %. (The mean viral load of semen was 145 copies/mL, ranging from 50 to 1475 copies/mL.); 5 of them detected the virus in the first semen specimen test, 14 in the second semen test, and 2 in both tests.
This suggests the possibility of sexual transmission and the importance of condom use in patients on successful antiviral therapy.