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Monday, 11 June 2012

A DRUG THAT FLUSHES OUT HIV

The issue with long term HIV treatment is drug resistance, side effects and the high cost of medications. As more health care providers and both poz and negative people view HIV as a lifelong, but treatable illness, much of the focus has been on controlling the virus within the body.

Like cancer, we are accustomed to thinking of a cure for HIV as both improbable and impossible. We hear the words "cannot be cured" over and again until the idea of eradication becomes a distant wish we only hope will come true by the end of our lifetime.

The issue isn't with overall pessimism or the science community's lack of progress. Quite the opposite is true. A number of significant advances have been made, especially in the last few years. What has prevented a cure is HIV's ability to not only mutate cells, but hide in the body. HIV plays a viral game of hide and seek. And like the childhood game, you can't tag what you cannot find. Knowing this, researchers attempt new strategies to help prolong HIV patient survival in the form of current antiretroviral therapies while they look for the convert cells. These therapies control viral levels, but don't eradicate the virus.

This may soon change with new findings from a team of researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill that give new hope to the battle for a cure. Researchers found that the biological mechanism that keep HIV cloaked can be targeted with the use of the oncology drug, vorinostat.

According to the study, vorinostat attacks the enzymes that keep HIV hiding in certain CD4+ T cells.These are the cells that HIV uses to replicate. Within hours of being given vorinostat, six clinical trial patients had a significant increase in HIV RNA in these cells. The study's author, professor of medicine, microbiology and immunology, and epidemiology Dr.David Margolis, says this is evidence that the virus was being forced out of its hiding. The results were presented March 8 at the 19th Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections in Seattle, Washington. 

More study is needed, but if the drug proves viable it could shed light on HIV's resting place. Once there, science can turn from defense to offense and work to eradicate the virus completely.

SOURCE: GAY LIFE

4 comments:

  1. Let's hope that Dr. David Margolis and his team of specialist/experts are correct and not another hypothesis.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Truly good news, but one has to wonder about the side effects of such a strong drug.

    ReplyDelete

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