Haroon Siddique - Scientists testing HIV cure report 'remarkable' progress after patient breakthrough
UK scientists and
clinicians working on a groundbreaking trial to test a possible cure
for HIV infection
say they have made remarkable progress after a test patient showed no sign of
the virus following treatment. The research, being
carried out by five of Britain’s top universities with NHS support, is
combining standard antiretroviral drugs with a drug that reactivates dormant
HIV and a vaccine that induces the immune system to destroy the infected cells.
Antiretoviral drugs
alone are highly effective at stopping the virus from reproducing but do not eradicate the disease, so must be taken for life. Fifty patients are
taking part in the trial. Early tests on the first person to complete the
treatment show no signs of the virus in his blood, the Sunday Times reported.
There is still a long
way to go before the treatment can be deemed a success as the virus has
previously re-emerged in people thought to have been “cured” and the use of
antiretroviral drugs means the researchers cannot be sure the HIV has gone.
Nevertheless, there is optimism over the findings.
Mark Samuels, the
managing director of the National Institute for Health Research Office for
Clinical Research Infrastructure, told
the Sunday Times: “This is one of the first serious attempts at a full cure
for HIV. We are exploring the real possibility of curing HIV. This is a huge
challenge and it’s still early days but the progress has been remarkable.”
HIV is able to hide
from the immune system in dormant cells where highly sophisticated modern
testing cannot find it, and therefore resist therapy. The treatment endeavours
to trick the virus into emerging from its hiding places and then trigger the
body’s immune system to recognise it and attack it, an
approach that has been called “kick and kill”. .. read more:
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/oct/02/scientists-testing-cure-for-hiv-report-progress
