An anti-alcoholism drug has been found to "wake up" dormant HIV cells in patients, say researchers who now want to know how to kill them.

An anti-alcoholism drug can reactivate dormant HIV, a discovery scientists say could be a "game changer" in finding a way to put the virus into long-term remission.

The drug, called disulfiram, "woke up" the dormant HIV cells without side effects in 30 HIV patients given increasing doses over a three-day period in Melbourne and San Fransisco.

The patients were already on suppressive antiretroviral therapy (ART), which leads to the virus remaining dormant only to re-emerge if the treatment is stopped.

Being able to wake up the virus and then destroy it has been a goal of HIV researchers, but the exact combination of drugs required has remained elusive.

"This is part of a strategy to one day find a way to put HIV into remission, meaning you don't have to take life-long antiretroviral drugs," the leader of the international study team, Professor Sharon Lewin said.

The director of Melbourne's Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity said some cancer drugs had been found to wake up dormant HIV, but were toxic.

"This trial clearly demonstrates that disulfiram is not toxic and is safe to use, and could quite possibly be the game changer we need," she said.

"Even though the drug was only given for three days, we saw a clear increase in virus in plasma, which was very encouraging."

Lead author of the paper, published in The Lancet HIV, Dr Julian Elliott said they had shown that the sleeping virus could be woken up with a safe medicine, easily taken orally once a day.

"Now we need to work out how to get rid of the infected cell," he said.

"We have an enormous amount still to learn about how to ultimately eradicate this very smart virus."