People infected with HIV should begin drug treatments sooner than current guidelines recommend, a new study suggests.

The 8,374 HIV-infected patients study found that treating HIV earlier than federal health officials recommended can lengthen sufferers’ lives. Postponing the treatment of HIV infection until patients’ immune systems are severely damaged almost doubles the risk of passing away in the coming years, in contrast with patients with the same virus whose drug treatment began earlier.

"This information is very significant," said Mari Kitahata, a University of Washington AIDS researcher in Seattle. "Our goal is to have people live as long as possible with as high quality of life as possible."

All participants in the study, which has been presented at the 48th Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy in Washington, were diagnosed with HIV/AIDS from 1996 to 2006. Conducted by Mari Kitahata of the University of Washington-Seattle, researchers found that patients who had delayed treatment were 71% more likely to die from the disease in any year than those who started the treatment earlier.

Meanwhile, scientists are wracking their brains to find a more effective weapon able to combat the disease - an AIDS vaccine. In the short-term, in an effort to decrease the number of deaths caused by the AIDS pandemic, governments must carry on expanding the employ of the methods currently at people’s disposal. Abstinence and faithfulness campaigns, condoms, and male circumcision are prevention methods that count among them.

Only in 2007, the pandemic killed an estimated 2.1 people, including 330,000 children, and about 33.2 million people lived with HIV disease worldwide.