What Is The Treatment
Stem-cell transplants appear to stop the virus being able to replicate inside the body by replacing the patient’s own immune cells with donor ones that resist HIV infection.
Adam Castillejo – the now 40-year-old “London Patient” who has – has no detectable active HIV infection in his blood, semen or tissues, his doctors say.
It is now a year after they first announced he was clear of the virus and he still remains free of HIV.
Lead researcher Prof Ravindra Kumar Gupta, from the University of Cambridge, told BBC News: “This represents HIV cure with almost certainty.
“We have now had two and a half years with anti-retroviral-free remission.
“Our findings show that the success of stem-cell transplantation as a cure for HIV, first reported nine years ago in the Berlin Patient, can be replicated.”
But it will not be a treatment for the millions of people around the world living with HIV.
The aggressive therapy was primarily used to treat the patients’ cancers, not their HIV.
And current HIV drugs remain very effective, meaning people with the virus can live long and healthy lives.
Prof Gupta said: “It is important to note that this curative treatment is high-risk and only used as a last resort for patients with HIV who also have life-threatening haematological malignancies.
“Therefore, this is not a treatment that would be offered widely to patients with HIV who are on successful anti-retroviral treatment.”
We Should Applaud These Groundbreaking Discoveries But Were Not At The Finish Line Yet
This is why the Global Fund, the organization that receives 100% of 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 current COVID-19 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.
Second Patient Cured Of Hiv Say Doctors
Health editor, BBC News online
A man from London has become the second person in the world to be cured of HIV, doctors say.
Adam Castillejo is still free of the virus more than 30 months after stopping anti-retroviral therapy.
He was not cured by the HIV drugs, however, but by a stem-cell treatment he received for a cancer he also had, the Lancet HIV journal reports.
The donors of those stem cells have an uncommon gene that gives them, and now Mr Castillejo, protection against HIV.
In 2011, Timothy Brown, the “Berlin Patient” became the first person reported as cured of HIV, three and half years after having similar treatment.
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When Are Children Tested For Hiv
HIV infections get worse quickly in the very young. The sooner the doctor can diagnose HIV, the more quickly and aggressively he or she can treat the infection. Children who are at high risk of being infected with HIV are tested as early as possible. If the mother had HIV during her pregnancy and wasn’t treated for it, her newborn may be given a blood test at birth. The doctor won’t wait for symptoms to appear.
More tests will be given as the baby grows. The baby will be tested for HIV within 2 to 3 weeks of birth and again in the weeks and months to come. The baby will be considered free of HIV infection if there are no symptoms and he or she is tested for the presence of the HIV virus at about 2 to 3 weeks, 4 to 6 weeks, and 2 to 4 months and all test results are negative.
All children, regardless of age, who have an HIV-positive mother are tested for HIV whether they show symptoms or not. Children who go to the doctor with HIV-like symptoms are tested as part of their examination.
Researchers Make First Steps Toward A Cure For Hiv
Researchers have developed a way to pull HIV out of the latent reservoir making the virus visible to the immune system and providing the potential to be killed by treatment.
Part of what has made HIV infection so difficult to cure, is that once the virus enters the body, some of it hides dormant inside of the cells, making it essentially invisible to both the immune system and antiretroviral drugs. This hiding virus is known as the ‘latent reservoir’ and it is what prevents a cure for people living with HIV.
Treatment with combined anti-HIV drugs can bring down virus in the body so that it cannot be measured by conventional tests and a person lives disease free, however, if an individual ever stops their life-long therapy, some of the virus will come out of hiding and rapidly re-emerge, while some of it stays dormant in the cells.
Eric Arts, Professor at Schulich Medicine and Dentistry at Western University and principal investigator on the study, said: “The aim is to get it all out of dormancy with a targeted punch, so the remaining virus can be killed
“Now that we’ve shown that this can be done with patient samples at early HIV disease, the hope is this will lead to targeted cure strategies.”
“If the virus is not replicating, the drugs can’t have an effect on it. By reactivating the virus, we can either inhibit it through antiretroviral therapy or it can be targeted by the body’s immune response.”
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Off Treatment And Still Undetectable
One approach to curing HIV is called treatment-free remission, or ART-free remission. This approach is also called a functional cure, because it would render HIV harmless without eliminating HIV from the body completely.
ART does a great job at eliminating HIV from the circulating blood of a PLWH, which is what keeps those on ART healthy and makes it impossible for those who are virally suppressed for at least six months to transmit HIV to their sexual partners . But even with viral suppression by ART, HIV remains hidden in a so-called HIV reservoir made up of immune system cells that contain HIV in the form of HIV DNA . Such HIV is called latent, because it hides from detection by the immune systemand these cells are called resting, because they are not actively producing new copies of the virus.
When latently infected, resting immune cells are reactivated, they begin to churn out new copies of fully active HIV. This explains why PLWH need to remain on ART throughout their entire lifeif ART stops, detectable virus comes back.
Finding ways to prevent the latent reservoir from becoming productive after stopping ART is thus a major focus of research into a cure for HIV today. This kind of sustained ART-free remission, sometimes called a functional cure, would allow a PLWH to keep latent virus suppressed without daily medication. Researchers are investigating a number of different strategies for achieving ART-free remission of HIV.
Start Treatment As Soon As Possible After Diagnosis
- HIV medicine is recommended for all people with HIV, regardless of how long theyve had the virus or how healthy they are.
- Talk to your health care provider about any medical conditions you may have or any other medicines you are taking.
- Let your health care provider know if you or your partner is pregnant or thinking about getting pregnant. They will determine the right type of HIV medicine that can help prevent transmitting HIV to your baby.
What if I delay treatment?
- HIV will continue to harm your immune system.
- This will put you at higher risk for developing AIDS. Learn more about AIDS and opportunistic infections.
- This will put you at higher risk for transmitting HIV to your sexual and injection partners.
What are the benefits of taking my HIV medicine every day as prescribed?
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We have representation in all African countries and actively in the following countries: Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Mali, Senegal, Burkina Faso, Togo, Kenya, Nigeria, Gabon, Central African Republic, Benin, Chad, Congo- Brazzaville, and Kinshasa. So be reassured that you will receive your products immediately after your order. Shipping is free anywhere in the world. You can contact us by WhatsApp at +229 52096581.
Box 2 Key Research Goals To Be Addressed In The Next 5 Years
Understanding HIV reservoirs
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Define the level of antigen expression needed to enable recognition of infected cells by immunotherapies
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Develop gene-editing strategies that target the provirus
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Develop strategies for sustained production in vivo of antiviral antibodies
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Leverage advances in other biomedical fields to develop safer and more scalable approaches
Pediatric remission and cure
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Characterize the establishment, persistence, and potential for preventing or reversing HIV latency in infants and children on ART
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Develop assays to monitor and identify biomarkers to predict the efficacy of HIV-1 cure therapeutics
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Test HIV immunotherapies and other strategies in infants and children
Social, behavioral, and ethical aspects of cure
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Expand community/stakeholder engagement and capacity building
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Develop HIV cure research with equity, representation, and scalability considerations
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Establish standards for the safe conduct of clinical research
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Integrate social, behavioral, and ethics research as part of HIV cure trials
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Build capacity for basic discovery research and clinical trials in high-burden, resource-limited settings
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A Second Hiv Patient May Have Been ‘cured’ Of Infection Without Stem Cell Treatment In Extremely Rare Case
By Jacqueline Howard, CNN
Researchers say they have found a second patient whose body seemingly had rid itself of the human immunodeficiency virus that causes AIDS — supporting hope that it may be possible someday to find a way to cure more people of the virus.
Antiretroviral Therapy As A Cure
It has been shown that treating the virus within the first 48 hours of exposure can significantly reduce the size of the HIV reservoir hidden in the body. This method is suitable for certain people , but will not work for everyone. In infants born to HIV-positive mothers, those who started ARTs within 6 to 12 months of birth had reduced mortality rates and a smaller HIV reservoir.However, many people do not get access to HIV treatment early enough and many people do not realise they have HIV until months after they are first exposed. This is another reason why it is important to go for an HIV test regularly so that you always know your status and can act quickly if you do become infected.Overall, researchers feel that ARTs alone will not make a cure strategy. Instead, ARTs might make up part of a cure package. The complexity of HIV infectionwhich establishes difficult-to-eliminate viral reservoirs very earlymeans that prompt ART alone may not be sufficient as an HIV cure strategy.
Red Light | Travis Goodspeed via Flickr
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For The 2nd Time A Person Is Cured Of Hiv Without Treatment Scientists Reportyour Browser Indicates If You’ve Visited This Link
A 30-year-old woman from Argentina diagnosed with HIV in 2013 may have “naturally” cleared the virus, according to a study published Nov. 16 in Annals of Internal Medicine. No signs of active infection or circulating virus were detected after numerous tests were conducted,
Becker’s Hospital Review
Researchers Identify New Hiv Patient Who Appears To Have Been Cured Without Treatment
Woman is second patient whose body seems to have rid itself of virus that causes AIDS.
An international team of researchers have found a second HIV-infected patient who seems to have been cured of the infection without any regular treatment, according to a study published in the November 16 issue of Annals of Internal Medicine.
Led by scientists at the Ragon Institute of Massachusetts General Hospital, MIT, and Harvard, the investigation examined more than 1.19 billion blood cells and 500 million tissue cells from a 30-year-old woman in Argentina, dubbed the Esperanza patient. Analysis of this massive numbers of cells revealed that the woman had been infected before, but scientists did not discover any intact human immunodeficiency virus capable of replicating in the patient.
Diagnosed with HIV in 2013, the subject only received antiretroviral treatment for six months when she became pregnant in 2019. After she gave birth to an HIV-negative child in March 2020, she stopped therapy. Researchers concluded that patient may have naturally achieved what is called a sterilizing cure of HIV-1 infection.
These observations raise the possibility that a sterilizing cure may be an extremely rare but possible outcome of HIV-1 infection, wrote the study authors.
The Foundation for AIDS Research, amfAR, called their research on elite controllers groundbreaking.
The same was the case regarding the Esperanza patients spontaneous cure.
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Pediatric Remission And Cure
The unique context of perinatal HIV infection necessitates pediatric-specific strategies to achieve ART-free remission in children. The case of the Mississippi child, who started therapy ~30hours after birth and achieved remission off ART for 27 months before virus rebounded,, raised the possibility that remission for children can be attained. Subsequent reports of early-treated pediatric cases with long-term virological control off ART have provided examples of post-treatment control in children,.
The nature of the reservoir in children is unique from that in adults. For example, naive CD4+T cells are a more important reservoir for the virus in children,. Further development of infant nonhuman primate models for evaluating ART and cure strategies will contribute to our understanding of the HIV reservoir and how to target it in the unique setting of infancy and immune development, but an understanding of the limitations of this model is also crucially important,,,,.
Many of the recent advances in understanding HIV persistence during ART in adults, including frequency and transcriptional activity of intact virus, clonal expansion, sites of proviral integration, and inducibility, need to be applied to studies of children. Optimizing methods that can be adapted to small blood volumes are also needed.
Womans Own Immune System Has Possibly Cured Her Of Hiv
A woman in Argentina has become only the second documented person whose own immune system may have cured her of HIV.
Researchers have dubbed the 30-year-old mother, who was first diagnosed with HIV in 2013, the Esperanza patient, after the town in Argentina where she lives. In English, esperanza means hope.
I enjoy being healthy, the Esperanza patient, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to the stigma associated with the virus, told NBC News in Spanish over email. I have a healthy family. I dont have to medicate, and I live as though nothing has happened. This already is a privilege.
This is really the miracle of the human immune system that did it.
Dr. Xu Yu, Ragon Institute
The co-authors of the study, which was in the Annals of Internal Medicine, said they believe their findings will indeed bring hope to the estimated 38 million people globally living with the virus and to the ever-expanding HIV-cure research field. The case serves as one of two proofs of concept that a so-called sterilizing cure of the virus is apparently possible through natural immunity.
This is really the miracle of the human immune system that did it, said Dr. Xu Yu, a viral immunologist at the Ragon Institute in Boston, who in partnership with Dr. Natalia Laufer, a physician scientist at INBIRS Institute in Buenos Aries, Argentina, led the exhaustive search for any viable HIV in the womans body.
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Second Patient Appears Cured Of Hiv Giving Hope To Hiv Positive People
Timothy Ray Brown, the first person to be cured of H.I.V., and Dr. Ravindra Gupta, a virologist, speak on the second patient who appears to have been cured of an H.I.V. infection. That patient has chosen to remain anonymous.
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Yes, I would like to meet the London patient very much. I would say, take your time in If you want to become public, do it. And its been very useful for science and for giving hope to H.I.V. positive people. We waited 16 months before stopping in the post-transplant period just to make sure that the cancer was in remission, the patient was well and that the measures we had of the H.I.V. reservoir in the body showed that there was very, very little virus there if any at all. And at that point, we stopped the treatment. And so were now 18 months in and were confident that this will be a long-term remission, but its too early to say as to whether this is a cure or not.
Most experts who know the details agree that the new case seems like a legitimate cure, but some are uncertain of its relevance for AIDS treatment overall.
Im not sure what this tells us, said Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. It was done with Timothy Ray Brown, and now heres another case ok, so now what? Now where do we go with it?
These are dreams, right? Things on the drawing table, Dr. McCune said. These dreams are motivated by cases like this it helps us to imagine what might be done in the future.