It was as a Ph.D. student that Dionna Williams realized the fundamental flaws in how medical science treats people who have HIV and also use illicit drugs or misuse prescription drugs.
People in this group often have worse outcomes than people with HIV who don’t use these drugs. Drug use and addiction have been linked to faster HIV disease progression, a higher viral load and worse symptoms, including brain-related problems.
For years, many doctors and scientists believed these poor outcomes resulted from people not taking the antiretroviral therapies that keep HIV in check, says Williams, a neuroscientist now at Emory University in Atlanta. No one really tested that hypothesis,
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