1. The cure, and its pretenders. To date only one person has ever been cured of HIV infection: Timothy Ray Brown, a resident of Berlin who received a CCR5-deleted bone marrow transplant while on potent anti-HIV medications. Recently we heard the word "cure" applied frequently but ultimately falsely to the Mississippi baby and some patients given ordinary bone marrow transplants. Everyone but Timothy has relapsed. Next year let's use the "C" word with caution, and for a great book on the search for a cure, try Cured: How the Berlin Patients Defeated HIV and Forever Changed Medical Science by Nat Holt.
2. A new model for AIDS. As I summarized in the Scientific American, Warner Greene's lab unleashed simultaneous papers in Science and Nature in late 2013 that upend how we understand the pathogenesis of AIDS. Through a stroke of luck reminiscent of the early identification of AZT - in which a promising new drug was already sitting on the shelf as a result of unrelated cancer research - Greene's group even moved a promising new approach to HIV treatment into clinical trials.
3. Better ART. Speaking of antiretroviral therapy (ART), the three-in-one antiretroviral drug Atripla has long been king of the HIV treatment hill. This changed with the late 2013 publication of the SINGLE trial in which a new combination drug (dolutegravir/abacavir/lamivudine) was safer and more effective than Atripla. This - and other similar studies in new HIV treatment options - has driven yet another shift in HIV treatment as patients have more and more ways of living long lives on good HIV medicine. This is cause for celebration, but we should not forget that most people with HIV can't access these treatments for one reason or another.
4. Do we really need all those CD4's? For years doctors have checked CD4 counts with every clinical visit, and patients have grown accustomed to that regular gauge on how they're doing. Yet as life expectancy on antiretroviral therapy gets longer and clinical visits become less frequent, many HIV docs have realized those faithfully-plotted CD4 counts aren't guiding our decisions for patients with suppressed HIV viral loads and strong immune systems. As a result, new guidelines make CD4 count monitoring "optional" for some patients - and I think it should be optional for more.
5. Hope for hepatitis C. HIV treatment successes weren't the only reason for hope this year. Drug development for hepatitis C has also progressed dizzyingly quickly. Multiple new effective regimens have been released recently, including some with equivalently near-perfect efficacy in people with HIV. Treatment is still complicated, but when the smoke clears and we work out the considerable financial obstacles to widespread treatment, many expect these potent new drugs to put a huge dent in the hepatitis C epidemic.