HIV cure found?

[Lisa]

URL here

Researchers knock out HIV

Posted on 18 October 2007

With the latest advances in treatment, doctors have discovered that they can successfully neutralise the HIV virus. The so-called ‘combination therapy’ prevents the HIV virus from mutating and spreading, allowing patients to rebuild their immune system to the same levels as the rest of the population. To date, it represents the most significant treatment for patients suffering from HIV.

Professor Jens Lundgren from the University of Copenhagen, together with other members of the research group EuroSIDA, have conducted a study, which demonstrates that the immune system of all HIV-infected patients can be restored and normalised. The only stipulation is that patients begin and continue to follow their course of treatment.

HIV attacks the body’s ability to counteract viruses
Viruses are small organisms that have no independent metabolism. Consequently, when they enter the body they attack living cells and adopt their metabolism. The influenza virus occupies cells in the nose, throat and lungs; the mumps attaches itself to the salivary glands of the ear; while the Polio virus plays on the intestinal tract, blood and salivary glands. In all these instances, our immune system attacks and eliminates the invading virus.

HIV is so deadly because the virus attaches itself to a crucial part of the immune system itself: to the so-called CD4+T lymphocytes, which are white blood corpuscles that help the immune system to fight infections. The Hi-virus forms and invades new CD4+T-lymphocytes. Slowly but surely, the number of healthy CD4+T lymphocytes in the blood fall, while HIV relentlessly weakens the body’s ability to defend itself from infection. Finally, the immune system erodes to such an extent that the infected patient is diagnosed with AIDS. The Hi-virus mutates constantly as it forms and this is why, scientists face a constant battle to find a cure or a vaccine.

Combination therapy knocks out HIV
Combination therapy prevents the virus from forming and mutating in human beings. When the virus is halted in its progress, the number of healthy CD4+T cells begins to rise and patients, who would otherwise die from HIV, can now survive. The immune system is rejuvenated and is apparently able to normalise itself, providing that the combination therapy is maintained. The moment the immune system begins to improve, the HIV-infected patient can no longer be said to be suffering from an HIV infection or disease, already declining in strength.

Findings from the study are published in the medical journal The Lancet - Vol. 370, Issue 9585, 4 August 2007, Pages 407-413

EuroSIDA
Copenhagen HIV PROGRAMME
Institute for Othopedics and Internal Medicine/University of Copenhagen

there is more here but it requires a login (free)

didn't know if this was better here or in slam, move if required.

it's amazing the progress made...

[CaptainChewbacca]

One thing that concerns me is if the HIV is still present. This could lead to 100% of humanity having a fatal illness which must be treated constantly.

[Durandal]

One thing that concerns me is if the HIV is still present. This could lead to 100% of humanity having a fatal illness which must be treated constantly.

I hope you're not stupid enough to think that the existence of this treatment will cause everyone to just throw away their condoms. HIV is still more than worth avoiding. Who wants to bear the cost, both financially and emotionally, of constant treatment the rest of their lives?

[Darth Raptor]

One thing that concerns me is if the HIV is still present. This could lead to 100% of humanity having a fatal illness which must be treated constantly.

Like aging?

Presumably, it would be bred out over a certain number of generations. Think about it: If the HIV carriers are never developing into full-blown AIDS victims, that means the virus isn't reproducing. With no new viral material being made, the extant material would be damaged, lost or otherwise removed from the human population over time. Not an ideal scenario, of course, but an inert virus carried by even an unbelievable 100% of the human population will "die" off eventually if it doesn't get to replicating.

[Spin Echo]

One thing that concerns me is if the HIV is still present. This could lead to 100% of humanity having a fatal illness which must be treated constantly.

I hope you're not stupid enough to think that the existence of this treatment will cause everyone to just throw away their condoms. HIV is still more than worth avoiding. Who wants to bear the cost, both financially and emotionally, of constant treatment the rest of their lives?

Seriously. Herpes is a mostly harmless, if annoying, STD and yet people still make an effort to avoid catching it (perhaps not as much as they should, but I digress).

[Coop D'etat]

The problem with HIV has always been how rapidly that bug adapts. It creates a tremendous number of new virions and, being a RNA retrovirus, it has a high rate of mutation per replication. You effectively see evolution in action as the disease progresses. If I recall my virology professor correctly, the strain that is infectious and spreads from person to person is genetically distinct from the one that causes the disease and kills you. The upshot is that, given time, the virus literally evolves in your body to overcome treatments against it and you have to either go on a new treatment or the bug comes back just as bad as before.

With that in mind, a HIV treatment that manages to overcome the virus's mutation rate is a major step, provided the thing actually works.

[Knife]

The article really doesn't say how it accomplishes this? So color me skeptical. Will it kill the enzyme in the virus that lets it do it's work, or fuck with the protiens or phospholipids on the T cell so the virus can't attach?

And Chewie has a point, if the virus can't attach itself to your T cells, you're still a carrier and thus a ticking time bomb for someone else.

[Darth Raptor]

The article really doesn't say how it accomplishes this? So color me skeptical.

Toward AIDS cures and HIV vaccines, I've developed an "I'll believe it when I see it" stance. As Coop D'etat pointed out, a vaccine may not even be possible. We've gotten remarkably good at suppressing symptoms, but any kind of "cure" (barring nanites going in and physically blasting them all with tiny, tiny lasers) has huge hurdles to overcome. Your objective is literally changing faster than you can analyze its properties, let alone come up with an effective counter to those characteristics. All this from a fucking protein shard filled with sugar.

[Sea Skimmer]

We’ve actually gotten to the point that we can eradicate any detectable trace of a HIV in a human body… but when those patients stopped taking drugs the virus came roaring right back. Its believed this is possible because HIV can inertly hid within the DNA of certain cells, IIRC they’ve been looking very strongly at certain types of intestinal cells for that line of research. Its going to be very hard to even know if a cure has ever truly even worked because of this.

[Death from the Sea]

One thing that concerns me is if the HIV is still present. This could lead to 100% of humanity having a fatal illness which must be treated constantly.

and that sounds like the plot of the villain in the movie Ultra Violet....

hopefully this is another step towards eradicating the virus

[Admiral Valdemar]

We’ve actually gotten to the point that we can eradicate any detectable trace of a HIV in a human body… but when those patients stopped taking drugs the virus came roaring right back. Its believed this is possible because HIV can inertly hid within the DNA of certain cells, IIRC they’ve been looking very strongly at certain types of intestinal cells for that line of research. Its going to be very hard to even know if a cure has ever truly even worked because of this.

That's always been the problem. Even if you factor in the advances in slowing the way the virus can adapt, a lot of it doesn't even matter since the particles can hide within the innate immune system for years, doing very little. So long as one strand of RNA exists in an active cell, the virus could happily repopulate the whole body again and start over like a Herpes reinfection.

And then you run the risk of it adapting again to whatever cocktail you've got, or even monoclonal antibodies which need to be endlessly reconfigured to work against each new iteration of the virus. In short, I will never believe a "cure" is found until someone does the same with the common cold or flu, as my immunology professor often stated. We do not cure viruses in the least today, even for very stable ones. To cure HIV is like trying to halt evolution.

New cocktails of drugs for slowing its effects are good, though we already have them and they are losing effectiveness as the price stays sky high. Yet, despite all this, a recent survey in the UK showed that many young people believe HIV is curable and don't fear it any more.

[Coop D'etat]

One thing that concerns me is if the HIV is still present. This could lead to 100% of humanity having a fatal illness which must be treated constantly.

and that sounds like the plot of the villain in the movie Ultra Violet....

hopefully this is another step towards eradicating the virus

Its unlikely we will ever be entirely rid of HIV, as it exists in wild ape populations. We were able to eliminate smallpox and have nearly eliminated polio because humans are those viruses only host. Even if there were no HIV in any human, all it would take is some very unlucky guy cutting himself while skining a chimp to cause a crossover again. However, it would be possible to contain any new outbreak and keep it from becoming the pandemic we have today.

[K. A. Pital]

Until molecular engineering becomes highly developed, I doubt an "ultimate" solution to viruses can be found. But after that, it's up for grabs.

[Admiral Valdemar]

You'd need an active immunological system that anticipated any future mutations heuristically and was fast to adapt to anything it missed. The human body would work just fine against HIV if only the virus didn't specifically target our own defences, negating most all of the fancy mechanisms we've built up over millions of years.

When it hides within cells, you can't really do anything but wait for a re-emergence before taking action.

[K. A. Pital]

Perhaps artificial immune systems can be drafted up in the future which would not succumb to HIV, which then are given to HIV patients. That is some hope I guess. Of course, HIV patients will still lose their social ability to procreate, but to avoid that, one needs more than just defeat the virus.

[Coop D'etat]

My guess is that for a truly effective treatment probably wouldn't even target HIV's own proteins, as it only has something like nine genes which mutate rapidly. Instead it would target the cellular processes that the virus depends on to replicate which would remain the same. The problem with this is that you body depends on these processes, so dosaging will be trickier and that the virus could possibly adapt against it and find a new way, albeit probably at a slower rate.

[Admiral Valdemar]

My guess is that for a truly effective treatment probably wouldn't even target HIV's own proteins, as it only has something like nine genes which mutate rapidly. Instead it would target the cellular processes that the virus depends on to replicate which would remain the same. The problem with this is that you body depends on these processes, so dosaging will be trickier and that the virus could possibly adapt against it and find a new way, albeit probably at a slower rate.

That is one possible route. The other is to simply deny the virus access to lymphocytes in the first place by having a special protein inhibitor bind to the CD4 site that seems so vital to the stealth method of infection this virus relies upon.

Block the binding site, save the world.

[Gustav32Vasa]

That is one possible route. The other is to simply deny the virus access to lymphocytes in the first place by having a special protein inhibitor bind to the CD4 site that seems so vital to the stealth method of infection this virus relies upon.

Block the binding site, save the world.

They tried that. Didnt work or killed the mouse, I forgot.
My bet is miRNA. Deny it evolution.

[PainRack]

Like aging?

Presumably, it would be bred out over a certain number of generations. Think about it: If the HIV carriers are never developing into full-blown AIDS victims, that means the virus isn't reproducing.

Say what? HIV carriers have the virus, its still being manufactured. The difference between AIDs and other diseases is that the viral load doesn't matter, what matters solely is the CD4 count. AIDs only occur when the CD4 count drops below 500.

[Nova Andromeda]

The last I heard, HIV remains hidden in an increasingly large number of cells after initial infection. This pool grows with each "outbreak" of the virus. This pool of cells represents a very large genetic diversity and therefore a good probability that at least a few versions will be resistant to whatever drug combination you throw at it. Until they find a way to erraticate or neutralize the latent infected cells for an entire lifetime I find it unlikely that HIV will not simply adapt.

[montypython]

Considering how much is still being discovered wrt molecular biology such as epigenetics et al, it wouldn't surprise me if people were overlooking possible solutions of both the obvious-in-hindsight and the unexpected.

[Gil Hamilton]

I understand the current method for treating HIV/AIDS, or at least one I've heard (in biology class, during the evolution segment) is that doctors are using specifically timed interruptions of medication.

What this does (aside from one of those predictions of evolution that creationists say don't exist) is that the strains of HIV that aren't drug resistant tend to be more aggressively prolific. So with structured interrupts in medication, so the drug is out of the system, suddenly, it becomes a less favored environment for the mutated resistant virus and you start seeing the non-resistant varieties re-emerge. Once that starts happening, treatment begins again until the virus mutates again. And so on. I understand it's very effective.

[Darth Raptor]

Say what? HIV carriers have the virus, its still being manufactured. The difference between AIDs and other diseases is that the viral load doesn't matter, what matters solely is the CD4 count. AIDs only occur when the CD4 count drops below 500.

I see. I was laboring under the misconception that HIV + patients had the virus in their bloodstream, but that it had yet to infect their immune system. My mistake.

[Rahvin]

One thing that concerns me is if the HIV is still present. This could lead to 100% of humanity having a fatal illness which must be treated constantly.

I hope you're not stupid enough to think that the existence of this treatment will cause everyone to just throw away their condoms. HIV is still more than worth avoiding. Who wants to bear the cost, both financially and emotionally, of constant treatment the rest of their lives?

HIV meds are ridiculously expensive. I know someone who is infected, and the straight cost of her medications is over $1500 monthly. Most insurance companies, of course, won't give her coverage either. It's fortunate that she lives in CA - there is a decent program out here for HIV patients that will cover their medication so long as they show they've tried every available opportunity for normal medical coverage. Universal healthcare can't come soon enough.

HIV is definitely worth avoiding even if constant treatment can keep the virus at bay. Hell, even the side effects of the meds are unpleasant enough for that. You need to eat at least 500 calories before ingesting your pills several times each day - but guess what one of the major side effects is? Extreme nausea and loss of appetite. It's an annoying catch-22. More dangerous side effects include liver and kidney failure.

More related to the article - my friend's CD4 count is currently excellent even for a healthy person, and her viral load is completely undetectable. The chances of such a person spreading the disease (even without a condom) is incredibly low, simply because there is virtually no virus in her system. Condoms should of course continue to be used, but treatments like this can make transmission so rare as to virtually wipe out the disease. It's not a cure, and it's not a vaccine, but it gives HIV positive individuals a chance to live a relatively normal life. It's unlikely a person infected today, if diagnosed and treated quickly, will die of AIDS.

[Gil Hamilton]

I see. I was laboring under the misconception that HIV + patients had the virus in their bloodstream, but that it had yet to infect their immune system. My mistake.

Well, CD4 cells (or T-cells) are part of the bloodstream, so you are right. They are just in other places too.