How Do Hiv Medicines Control The Virus
HIV medicines prevent the virus from growing and making copies of itself. This decreases the amount of HIV or viral load in the body.
HIV typically attacks CD4 immune cells in your body. If these cells get destroyed, your body cant fight infections and HIV-related cancers. HIV medicines target the virus and allow the immune system to recover and produce more CD4 cells.
These medicines cant remove HIV from your body. But they can slow down viral growth and help restore your immune system to fight off infections and diseases. HIV medicines reduce the viral load in the blood to undetectable levels and reduce the risk of HIV transmission through sex.
Different Pathways To A Cure
Researchers and scientists believe that the world will find a cure for HIV, but there are different pathways for a cure.
A functional cure can reduce HIV in the body to levels that it cant be detected or make someone sick, but it does not completely get rid of the virus from a body. While some may consider the current treatments as a functional cure, ideally, a functional cure would suppress the virus without the need to take drugs for the rest of an infected persons life.
A sterilising cure, however, would eradicate the virus from the body. This cure would include removing HIV from hidden reservoirs in the body that is, from cells infected with HIV in the early stages but are not actively producing HIV in the body.
Disease Within A Context
HIV infection has a close relation to human behaviour and social factors. In the rise of the AIDS pandemic, the disease was described as particularly affecting homosexual men. But this does not reflect the full picture.
Most people living with HIV in the Americas and Europe are male. But in Africa the continent with the highest HIV infection prevalence women are more affected than men. In South Africa, the major risk factors are being female and under the age of 17, often a result of sexual abuse and sex trafficking. Even though women represent more than half of people living with HIV worldwide, they have been excluded from research because of the assumption that the virus affects more men than women, highlights Dr. Perez.
Social determinants of health play a crucial role in how HIV spreads among populations. In their clinical practice in Kingston, Dr. Perez notes that many patients use intravenous drugs. These patients were possibly contaminated by infected syringes. Many are also in and out of prison. In Ontario, only patients over 65 have access to free antiretroviral treatment for HIV. These layers of complex social dynamics and access that vary within provinces and cities across Canada pose challenges for HIV prevention, treatment, and research.
Around the world, stigma is still one of the biggest challenges in combating HIV. It prevents people from getting tested and from engaging in care, says Dr. Perez.
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How Far Away Is A Cure
With the reports of people experiencing cure in the news and the advances in research, it might sound like a cure is just around the corner, but its not so straightforward. HIV cure is a hugely complex puzzle. Whether its complete eradication or a functional cure, a cure for HIV is at least several years away, maybe longer. But there is hope, and new efforts are underway that may speed things up.
One is the appearance of big collaborations between various research centers, says Greene, where laboratories working on cures share their findings. Collaborations can speed up research.
A key program for this is the Martin Delaney Collaboratories for HIV Cure Research, the flagship National Institutes of Health program on HIV cure research. It fosters collaborations between researchers studying HIV and working on potential strategies for a cure. Collaborations bring together researchers from academia, industry, government, and communities.
An example of one such collaboration is the HOPE Collaboratory, which consists of a diverse, multidisciplinary, international group of HIV researchers from around the world. People in this particular collaboration are working on the block-and-lock approach.
Progress In Preventing Hiv Infection
PrEP is a regimen of antiretroviral drugs given before an individual is infected with HIV that is designed to protect people at risk. When used as recommended, it can dramatically reduce transmission risk. But it appears to be more effective at preventing HIV in men who have sex with men than in heterosexual womena group of individuals who are also at risk, especially in sub-Saharan Africa.
Roans lab is studying the factors that may be responsible for the difference.
We are trying to understand what happens during the earliest of events when the female reproductive tract is exposed to HIV, she says. Historically, both in the HIV cure and prevention areas, most studies have focused on men. We really need more effective ways that can prevent transmission and cure HIV for the entire population at risk.
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How Close Are We To A Cure For Hiv/aids
CHARLOTTE, N.C. â Last month, a woman from Argentina was documented as one of the first few people to be cured of HIV, and Spectrum News 1 looked into how close we are to finding a cure on a large scale.
What You Need To Know
- About 38 million people live with HIV worldwide
- In North Carolina, there were about 33,000 people living with HIV in 2019
- That same year 474 people died from the illness
Joe Lewis enjoys cooking with his family. Itâs an activity they often do together and some even passed down their secret recipes.
âI am about to cook some French toast,â Lewis said. âItâs a recipe I got from my grandfather.â
While these were usually joyous times. His family was also there for him in the tough moments, like when he was diagnosed with HIV at the age of 21.
âI just left Dallas and ended up getting terminated from my job because I was trying to hold on,â Lewis said.
More than a decade later, he is doing much better however, he is living with a reminder of his past every day. He currently takes the medication Biktarvy every day to treat HIV. While the side effects of his medication arenât bad, there’s something else that bothers him.
âItâs a reminder daily of ‘oh, I got this thing,’â Lewis said. âAnd then there is stress about do I have enough? Did I get my prescription filled on time?â
âThese were somebodyâs sister, somebodyâs daughter, somebodyâs brother, uncle or nephew,â RAIN President Chelsea Gulden said.
Is There A Permanent Aids
As yet, there is no permanent HIV cure. Antiretroviral treatment can effectively control HIV, prevent AIDS, and help people live a healthy life despite the infection. It can make the viral load undetectable but cant completely cure HIV.
Research is being conducted to find a definitive AIDS-HIV cure. There are two types of HIV cures being researched. One is a functional cure, which reduces the levels of HIV in the body. Antiretroviral therapy is a functional cure, but it needs to be taken throughout life.
Another cure is called a sterilizing cure, which can completely remove HIV from the body. A stem cell transplant is one such treatment. To date, only three patients are known to have been completely cured of HIV through a stem cell transplant. They are as follows:
Stem cell therapy showed promising results in these cases. However, transplants require surgery and can be risky for patients living with HIV.
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Whats In The Hiv Treatment Pipeline For 2022 And 2023
When it comes to the HIV treatment landscape, 2021 wasnt exactly a seismic year. Not like, say, 1996, when the lifesaving protease-driven cocktail treatment broke through. The biggest treatment advance in 2021 was probably the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval of Cabenuva , the first long-acting HIV treatment, which requires a monthly injection at your providers office.
Looking ahead, the key word remains long-actingmeaning the possibility of more options that can be taken orally, by injection, or even by implant no more than once every month.
Heres our rundown of whats on the horizonorganized with help from Mark Harrington and Richard Jefferys at Treatment Action Group , whose indispensable annual pipeline report can take you on a deeper dive if you so choose.
We Should Applaud These Groundbreaking Discoveries But Were Not At The Finish Line Yet
This is why the Global Fund, the organization that receives the money generated by partners, is so important. While the medical community continues to work on finding a safe, cost-effective cure for HIV/AIDS, Global Fund programs in over 100 countries are focused on scaling up access to daily antiretroviral medicationthe current, closest thing to a cure for people living with HIV. These programs also provide prevention services, care, treatment and education to the people most affected by HIV, which are crucial to limiting the spread of the virus.
Given the devastating impact of the COVID pandemic on the fight to end AIDS, supporting the Global Fund is more crucial now than ever before. Join and help ensure those living with HIV can continue to access essential programs and services.
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Why Is It Taking So Long To Find A Cure
For those living with HIV, it may seem like it is taking scientists forever to find a cure for HIV. Considering how many drugs are out there to treat HIV, surely, they would have found a way to knock the virus out once and for all, right?
Unfortunately, several factors contribute to why it is taking so long to find a cure. The first set of these is more about the research to find a cure than the virus itself. It includes limitations on our global capacity to study HIV in laboratories, to fund cure research, and even to find willing study participants.
Hiv Hides In The Body
Scientists had hoped giving strong treatment medications so soon after birth would get rid of the virus or prevent it from spreading and doing damage.
The fact that the HIV virus eventually turned up in the âMississippi babyâ isn’t unexpected, says Robert Siliciano, MD, PhD, professor of medicine in the infectious diseases department at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. It supports the theory that HIV cells stay in the body, just out of view in a hidden “reservoir.”
“Curing HIV infection is going to require strategies to eliminate this reservoir,” he says.
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A Cure For Hiv An Update One Year Later
Laurie Saloman, MSContagion
Big advances in treatment cant make up for an inability to stop new infections, which number 5,000 per day worldwide.
The trajectory of HIV has changed dramatically in just a few decades. Back in the early days of the epidemic, contracting HIV basically meant progressing to full-blown AIDS and death. Now, thanks to antiretroviral drugs and other therapies, individuals with HIV often can keep the virus at bay, avoid infecting others and live a normal lifespan. But while HIV has moved from a guaranteed death sentence to a chronic condition that can be kept at bay, a permanent cure has, thus far, eluded researchers.
The first step toward figuring out how far weve progressed toward a cure, according to experts, is to define it. What do you mean by a cure? asked Anthony Fauci, MD, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. If by cure you mean eradicating the virus, there hasnt been much progress made.
However, Dr. Fauci spoke encouragingly about the gains that have been made just this past year in terms of long-term virus suppression. Researchers continue to develop long-acting therapeutics, such as broadly neutralizing antibodies, that enable those living with HIV to keep the virus undetectable and untransmissible for longer periods of time. Referencing ongoing animal studies that demonstrate long-term suppression, these results get into the cure range, he told Contagion®.
Gene Therapy Shows Promise
Does Hiv Treatment Cause Side Effects
Like most medicines, HIV medicines can cause side effects in some people. However, not everyone experiences them. The HIV medicines used today have fewer side effects and are less severe than in the past. Side effects can differ for each type of HIV medicine and from person to person. Some side effects can occur once you start a medicine and may only last a few days or weeks. Other side effects can start later and last longer.
Side effects of HIV medicine most commonly reported include:
- Nausea and vomiting
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There Have Been Two Cases Of People Cured Of Hiv
There are two cases where researchers cured HIV entirely, both as part of the sterilising approach.
The first in was Timothy Brown , who received chemotherapy and a bone marrow transplant as part of his leukemia treatment in 2007. The transplant was from a donor who had a natural resistance to HIV, and following Browns transplant, he appeared to be free of HIV.
Following this, doctors replicated this result on another patient, Adam Castillejo, or the London Patient, where following his transplant, became HIV-free. As of 2020, 30 months after stopping treatment, Adam was still HIV-free.
Natural Controllers Versus The Absolute Cure
Block and lock is not the only strategy Gladstone scientists are pursuing.
While the bodys immune system cannot eradicate HIV on its own, scientists have known for some time about a group of individuals known as elite controllers who seem able to keep the virus in check without antiretrovirals. In these individuals, some virus remains, but at levels too low to cause the development of full-blown AIDS.
More recently, researchers have identified yet another group that seems able to control the virus after antiretroviral therapy.
When these post-treatment controllers go off the therapy, sometimes the virus doesnt come back at all, says Roan, who is also a member of the HOPE Collaboratory. Other times, it seems like it is returning, but if you wait a while, the viral count goes back down, so the immune system seems to be controlling it. Theres a big push to understand why these individuals are able to control the virus after treatment is interrupted whereas the virus rebounds in typical individuals.
Researchers are exploring approaches in which HIV will still remain in the body, but that may be a more realistic goal than eliminating the virus altogether.
Roans lab is helping understand how this happens. Early data suggest that the phenomenon is more common among individuals whose HIV infection was treated early. Understanding the mechanism of post-treatment control might lead to a treatment strategy that would involve boosting the immune system.
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Is It Possible To Cure Hiv
According to Jonathan Li, M.D., associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, there have been several reports of people experiencing a cure of their HIV. These people had different situations and experiences, but they provide clues that researchers can use to try to find ways to develop some sort of cure.
There are two instances in which a person was widely accepted to have been cured of HIV. Both people were cancer patients also diagnosed with HIV: Timothy Brown in 2007 , and Adam Castillejo in 2019 . They were both on intensive anti-cancer treatments that suppressed their immune system, and both underwent stem cell transplants as part of their cancer treatment.
What stands out is that both men received stem cell transplants that happened to come from donors who had a rare mutation called CCR5-delta32. This mutation is protective against most strains of HIV and may be what cured the HIV in these men. Finding donors with this unusual mutation, along with the other genetic matching necessary for a stem cell transplant, is difficult.
Such stem cell transplants usually require extensive radiation and chemotherapy first, which makes them highly risky procedures. Also, donor cells can be rejected by the recipients body, leading to serious complications.
There is also a question of reliability. The approach appears to work on only a very limited number of peoplejust the two confirmed cases to date .
Is There A Cure For Hiv
On Sunday, March 3rd, the BBC News published a report claiming that a baby girl in the United States, who had been born HIV-positive, was cured after an intense treatment regimen.
Although more testing needs to be done, the baby girl, now two-and-a-half, is no longer on medication and reportedly infection-free for over a year. This is after she was placed on a cocktail of widely available drugs called antiretrovirals, which are already used to treat HIV. In this childs case, however, because her mother was HIV-positive and had not received special prenatal care , doctors at the University of Mississippi Medical Center placed the baby girl on three different antiretrovirals when she was just thirty hours old even before lab tests confirmed she was positive for HIV. This decision was made by Dr. Hannah Gay, who stated, I just felt like this baby was at higher-than-normal risk and deserved our best shot.
After staying on medication for eighteen months, the girl disappeared from the medical system and was taken off the medication. She reappeared five months later with no signs of the virus of other HIV-related infections.
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