RELATED ITEMS On the Web The AIDS Clinical Trials Information Service has data on the latest HIV treatment. There are two different types of viral load testing. The National AIDS Treatment Information Project provides information about CD4 counts. A Department of Health and Human Services agency confirmed in March that triple therapy can delay HIV disease progression. The 52 AIDS Drug Assistance Programs vary greatly from state to state. The International Council of AIDS Service Organizations provides periodic updates on the international AIDS situation. From The Post Recent HIV and AIDS articles from The Post are available online. From the AP Related articles from the Associated Press are available online. Editor's Note: Some of the above links will take you out of The Post's Web site. To return, use the Backbutton on your browser. Go to National Section Go to Home Page

Karen Lyons' health has greatly improved with the new drugs, and she's now planning her education. Photo by Nancy Andrews -- The Washington Post

The slowing of HIV's spread is a product of both the natural course of epidemics and the hard-won efforts of people to stanch the spread of this particular one. But change is occurring in more than populations. It is also changing in individuals.

After a long period of frustration, medicine in the last few years has finally started to catch up to the disease and can now offer, for the first time, treatments that may substantially lengthen life and in some cases even restore health. In the United States, and other affluent societies with a tradition of aggressive medical care, the trajectory of HIV illness is substantially different from what it used to be.

Unquestionably, the most important development in AIDS in the United States in the last two years has been the arrival of protease inhibitors, a new class of drugs that are used, in most cases, in three-drug combinations with other antiviral medicines.

Scientists now know that, despite the seeming quiescence of HIV in the early stages of a person's infection, the virus and the immune system are actually locked in all-out combat from the start. Every day, up to 10 billion individual viruses are made and killed off, with the immune system losing only after years of furious struggle.

"Triple therapy" can stop, or nearly stop, that cycle of virus replication. It is a treatment that, while probably unable to eradicate infection, nevertheless strikes at the source of HIV's pathological effects.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that between 650,000 and 900,000 Americans are infected with HIV. In only about two-thirds has the infection actually been diagnosed. Of the people who know they are infected, perhaps 200,000 are on triple therapy.

Like most new treatment strategies, this one was was first tried on the sickest patients. However, it may turn out that triple therapy's real promise lies elsewhere.

Almost certainly, the most famous American undergoing chronic treatment for this disease is Earvin "Magic" Johnson. The former star of the Los Angeles Lakers announced in 1991 that he was infected with the AIDS virus. A combination of antiviral drugs, Johnson and his doctors have said, suppressed the virus to levels below the ability to detect them in his blood. It appears the basketball star has been healthy throughout the course of his infection.

It is that state — early, symptom-free infection — that triple therapy may be able to maintain for long periods of time. Most AIDS specialists now believe that if an infected person comes to treatment early enough, he or she may never experience the ruinous assault of AIDS. The truly dramatic stories in the new world of AIDS may turn out to be those of people who led altogether ordinary lives after they became infected.

For the moment, the new treatment's obvious effects are in sick people suddenly made well. Its dramatic benefits are not always lasting, nor are they easy to achieve. (Triple therapy costs up to $12,000 a year, and its psychic demands on patients are equally large and unforgiving.) Nevertheless, there is a growing urgency to put as many people on triple therapy as possible, because its benefits appear to be so great.