When the virus awakens, it can trigger new bouts of infection – a risk that forces HIV patients to stay on treatments for life. It’s clear that if we’re going to cure HIV for good, we need some way of rousing these dormant viruses from their rest and eliminating them.

A team of US scientists led by David Margolis has found that vorinostat – a drug used to treat lymphoma – can do exactly that. It shocks HIV out of hiding. While other chemicals have disrupted dormant HIV within cells in a dish, this is the first time that any substance has done the same thing in actual people.

At this stage, Margolis’s study just proves the concept –