This month, researchers at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine have released a report showing that the drug minocycline, commonly used as an acne treatment, is also quite effective against latent HIV-infected T cells (type of white blood cell).

One reason HIV remains such a medical challenge is because the virus is capable of infecting two groups of cells: active, growing T cells, and resting T cells.

Infection of active T cells leads to extensive viral replication and proliferation of the disease. The current highly active antiretroviral…