Lying in Wait Even after therapy forces HIV in the blood down to undetectable levels, the virus still lurks elsewhere—ready to storm back if given the chance
Image: Mark Hooper
In Brief
- Current drug regimens can dramatically suppress HIV in patients, but none of these agents can completely eliminate the virus.
- To eradicate HIV from infected individuals, researchers must figure out where the virus hides and how to hit it in those places.
- Recent findings have exposed some of HIV’s refuges, suggesting new therapeutic targets.
More In This Article
In contrast to the failed attempts at developing a vaccine against HIV, efforts to provide drug therapies stand as a great success. More than 25 agents have been approved thus far, and the right combinations can suppress replication of the virus, often keeping blood levels so low as to be undetectable by standard tests. These powerful drug cocktails, collectively termed highly active antiretroviral therapy, or HAART, have prolonged life and health in countless infected individuals. Yet vexingly, today’s treatments cannot actually cure the infection. If for any reason therapy is interrupted, the virus rapidly rebounds.
Figuring out how HIV manages to hang around in the company of these potent drugs is one of the most important tasks currently facing researchers. Over the past decade investigators have gleaned key insights into this mystery. The answers, we hope, will ultimately reveal whether complete eradication of the virus in a patient is feasible.
This article was originally published with the title Can HIV Be Cured?.
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17 Comments
Add CommentA thought experiment... the strategy of "Let's get tested TOGETHER BEFORE we have sex, for A VARIETY of STDs." Sexual health checkups reduce ambiguity and can be like anything else POTENTIAL sex partners might do together.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCity of Hope announced this week progress in their exciting trial using RNA interference.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Zaia told an RNAi for therapeutics conference in Boston that three patients have had safe engraftment at 10 days, and the researchers had observed gene markers in the blood months later.
The trial involves a triple gene therapy: the lentivirus vector encodes three forms of anti-HIV RNA. One is an shRNA that targets an exon in the HIV tat/rev gene, another is a decoy for TAR, and the third is a ribozyme that targets the host cell CCRG chemokine receptor. "
http://www.biotechnews.com.au/index.php/id;834976069
"Quarantined those with aids" - is that a joke? First of all, how would you go about quarantining those with HIV? Go around poking people with needles to take blood samples? Or maybe a public service announcement? "Hey all you people with HIV, come be quarantined."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe have never been able to cure a virus in the history of medicine; we have only been able to vaccinate against it.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHIV is Evolutionary question and problem with an Evolutionary answer, as a virus like all life is a Responsive Design, being cognitive, despite anchoring issues.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA virus sees itself against a provoked and projected reality or environment.
The cocktail drug regiment shows an uphill battle with this type thinking and understanding, making the good fight elsewhere.
But what is elsewhere?
Here, a good understanding of the anchoring techniques by the virus, the method of replication, and not least, how a virus fuels, where the main function of Responsive Designing is fueling.
No doubt, current drugs are used to suppressive the destruction power of the virus against its host.
Again, it will require out of the box thinking if we are to win!
Roy D. Schickedanz
Refuting Charles Darwin in the case of Life’s Responsive Design
HIV is Evolutionary question and problem with an Evolutionary answer, as a virus like all life is a Responsive Design, being cognitive, despite anchoring issues.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA virus sees itself against a provoked and projected reality or environment.
The cocktail drug regiment shows an uphill battle with this type thinking and understanding, making the good fight elsewhere.
But what is elsewhere?
Here, a good understanding of the anchoring techniques by the virus, the method of replication, and not least, how a virus fuels, where the main function of Responsive Designing is fueling.
No doubt, current drugs are used to suppressive the destruction power of the virus against its host.
Again, it will require out of the box thinking if we are to win!
I am not saying HIV is like aging. Today, the consensus is that aging is a disease versus a condition which aging is from a Responsive Design point of view or the reality of real.
What aging confronts are permeable cellular wall issues, making the permeable wall more important than the chromatic nucleus of a cell. Here, surface sensitivity is beyond all imagination. It is here where we see the vitality of life is actually maintained.
At the same time Life has a fuel tank mentality, swimming its tanks at all level. This is how life works at 24/7.
In many ways, aging is self induced. There is no reason, why the oxygen engine cannot run perpetual.
By the way, this how I know those who really understand Evolution or not, by the way they look.
If you know how life works, use it on oneself!
Aging front’s hydration issues big time, both internally and externally. Life does not forget its water birth.
Man, that hybrid Pan Chimpanzee, is a tretapod out of water, where the fuel tank was change from water to the atmosphere of Earth, gills for lungs.
This made the conquest of land possible, not so much the four limbs as our Darwinian Evolutionists would have us believe.
The four limbs for mobility and directional orientation (front ones) were already had as bottom feeders upon lakes, rivers, and streams.
HIV will be had by a different view of point, like the conditional view point for aging.
Roy D. Schickedanz
Refuting Charles Darwin in the case of Life’s Responsive Design
773-933-9275
With all the money being made by the pharmaceutical companies from HIV drugs, do you really think a cure would ever be made public?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisUniversity of Pennsylvania recently demonstrated the ability to make T-cells permanently resistant to HIV using Zinc Finger Nuclease technology from Sangamo Biosciences. Not only do the treated cells become HIV resistant but the effect is systemic and even makes infected cells HIV resistant. This appears to be the first real breakthrough in treating and preventing HIV. Phase I clinical studies are next.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHere's the title and link to the press release and related resources:
Sangamo BioSciences Presents Data at ICAAC Demonstrating 'In Vivo' Protection Against HIV Infection by CCR5-ZFN Therapeutic.
Preclinical Animal Data Demonstrates Selective Survival Advantage of ZFN-Treated Immune Cells after HIV Infection and Reduced Viral Loads
http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/081028/aqtu115.html?.v=54
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122602394113507555.html?mod=special_page_campaign2008_mostpop
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe wor$t thing that could happen (from the point of view of Pharmaceutical Corporation$) i$ for a hiv/aids cure to be found. Come on whistle blowers tell the world whats really going on behind closed lab/boardroom doors.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSo are their any genuine (thats GENUINE) alternative independent studies, tests, or research being done.
HIV information is something one must know in order to keep themselves free from any complication that may arise. One of the health problems that makes scientist continue their experiment is finding vaccines to cure HIV virus.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thissource: http://simplestdtesting.com/resources/2009/07/the-importance-of-hiv-testing/
Find the cure...or finish the world
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere's a cure ...it's impossible to be a lot of scientist's wich couldn't discover it.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe can destroy the world...but can't finish this illness?
thanks for sharing this info .. http://simplestdtesting.com/resources
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYes our scientists will get a killer for the virus, and many other virus, maybe even from a galenical like neem margosa leaf root bark.# .# even IV Iodine!!!#vaccine is not a killer for the virus already in......
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisapostle shad amishe be encouraged to get scientific accepted trials with the palm extract. and do it soon, all over the globe, multicentral....................costs next to nothing.................with the ubiquous palm. # side by side he may try the neem margosa pastes w well known virus expel properties of the leaf/ flower.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisgoood but impractical in the grass field.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this