However, two things must be kept in mind when considering changing the recommendations. If this is the case, then the current recommendations may be appropriate, or it may even be that treatment could be initiated later for women and people of color. What is most important clinically is how different groups respond to treatment, not whether their viral loads are different in the absence of treatment. It is thus critically important to determine if the differences in viral load mean that women and people of color do better with treatment than white men, or worse. The scientific community is only beginning to be able to answer this question.
Much more research is required.
This suggests that people who initiate treatment later may do just as well as those who initiate treatment by the current recommendations. Again, the optimal time to initiate treatment remains unanswered for all HIV infected individuals. It is thus premature to suggest a change in treatment recommendations for specific groups. It is not clear whether such a change would mean women or men of color would be treated earlier or later. Investigations of this question should clearly include enough women, and men of color, to allow informed decision making for those groups specifically.