Great strides have been in the treatment of HIV and AIDS. Twenty years ago, patients needed fistfuls of medications to keep their infections under control. Now, a single daily pill can be just as effective.

HIV is still an epidemic, though, and no cure yet exists for the disease. In 2019 alone there were at least 36,000 new diagnoses in the U.S. and its territories, pushing the total number of patients to nearly 1.2 million. Among that population, the CDC estimates about 87% knew they had HIV.

Preventive treatments have proven essential in the ongoing fight against the disease. In 2012, Gilead’s once-daily pill Truvada became the first drug approved by the FDA to reduce the risk of sexually acquired HIV in unaffected adults. The agency then cleared a second drug, Gilead’s Descovy, as a PrEP treatment in late 2019.

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