The 17th Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections maintained its tradition of being the preeminent forum for detailing the state-of-the-art of antiretroviral therapy. Abundant new and updated information was presented on investigational drugs, approaches to the management of treatment-naive and -experienced patients, the use of drugs for prevention of mother-to-child HIV-1 transmission, and HIV resistance to antiretroviral drugs. Of particular note were the continued advances in antiretroviral treatment and research emanating from resource-limited settings and from large clinical trials to determine the optimal initial antiretroviral drug regimen. Several interesting smaller studies were focused on HIV-1 pathogenesis and persistent viremia.