Melbourne, Australia. A group of scientists has managed to dislodge the AIDS virus from the cells in which it hides when patients are treated with antiretrovirals.
Taking antiretroviral reduces the amount of virus in the blood to undetectable levels and allows patients to lead an almost normal life. However, these medications must be taken every day, are expensive and have side effects. If you are stopped, the virus that has remained dormant somewhere in the body, flares up in just a few weeks and re-infect cells of the immune system, making the patient vulnerable to many diseases, some fatal.
Therefore, scientists are trying to evict the virus from their shelter and kill the cells in which it hides while the patient is under antiretrovirals.
On World AIDS Congress, which takes place in Melbourne, a group of researchers from the University of Aarhus in Denmark presented its findings. Six patients treated with antiretroviral also took romidepsin, an anticancer which increases from 2.1 to 3.9 times the amount of virus in the blood.
In five of the six patients, the virus then became unreachable.
"We have shown that romidepsin can activate a virus that overwinters," said Ole Sogaard Schmeltz, head of the research team.
"It's a step in the right direction, but the road is still long and the obstacles are numerous before we can speak of a cure for AIDS," he added.
Researchers now have to determine if all the hidden viruses were "revealed" and find a way to kill the cells shelter, where the genetic material of the virus multiplies barely stop taking antiretrovirals.
And OF MISSISSIPPI GIRL?
The International AIDS Conference, which meets every two years to specialists around the world, was marked a few days before its opening by disappointment in the case of the girl from Mississippi.
This is an American girl born with HIV, passed on by his mother, who received from a few hours after birth heavy doses of drugs for 18 months. But after the girl was not taken to the treatment for five months and when he returned doctors found no traces of the virus and declared cured.
However, a few days ago found that 27 months after living without drugs or HIV, the virus had reappeared in Mississippi girl.
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