Now more than 25 years since the 1983 discovery of HIV as the cause of AIDS, research continues at a steady clip in pursuit of sound prevention strategies, better treatments and—with a little bit of luck—a cure. While 2008 wasn’t exactly a year of earth-shattering discoveries, there were advances, setbacks and a few telltale hints of interesting things to come in 2009. Here we review the top 10 treatment research developments that made us sit up straight during the past 12 months.

Here are the top 10 most talked about stories this year on POZ.com, ranked by the number of your comments.

The goal of hepatitis C virus (HCV) treatment is to drop-kick HCV levels to undetectable while on interferon and ribavirin therapy for a year and maintain it for six months after treatment stops. But this only occurs in a minority of people coinfected with HIV and HCV. While it was originally believed that continued treatment might help protect the liver, a large clinical trial suggests that interferon maintenance therapy yields no additional benefit—or does it?

The Latino Commission on AIDS released a report on World AIDS Day documenting the high rates of HIV/AIDS among Latino people in Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee.

Founder, Copasetic Women, New York City