Current Progress in HIV Fight: Cure in a Jiffy!
It might interest you to know that Incredible advances have been made in the development of effective HIV treatments that allow people living with HIV to suppress their virus to undetectable levels and avoid transmision.
It’s a fair fact that we all know that the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) is incurable – at least not yet. How badly and fatal it is and how people living with it get traumatized due to stigmatization.
This period of effective treatment with antiretrovirals (ARV) is undoubtedly a gigantic bounce forward from the early beginnings of the HIV crisis, but oh!, the fact remains that almost 38 million people are living with HIV worldwide.
Despite the helpful treatment with ARVs, an individual will still have to take a forever treatment regimen – I mean everyday drugs, forever. This can take a substantial emotional, physical, and social toll on the individual.
To lift the significant burdens of daily treatment and social stigma associated with HIV, a cure is necessary towards accomplishing the objective of ending the HIV epidemic.
It might interest you to know that HIV was discovered forty years ago, and the medical community has made significant progress in terms of testings, treatments, and the development of a cure since then.
While COVID-19 has had a negative impact on the world, the pandemic has produced some good story. The COVID-19 vaccine, which was previously viewed with some disbelief as paits efficacy, has the way for the application of its technology to other diseases such as HIV.
However, due to the nature of the virus, which becomes part of the human DNA 72 hours after transmission, it is still acknowledged that developing an HIV vaccine will be difficult.
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Well, reducing HIV levels in the body to the extent where it can’t be detected or cause illness is a great win – though it doesn’t eradicate the virus. This is a functional cure! Antiretroviral therapy could be considered as one even though a functional cure would ideally suppress the virus without the need for an infected person to take medications for the rest of their lives but there are long lasting ARVs which is taken one or two month apart instead of the daily routine.
A LITTLE MORE TIME
Curing HIV is a difficult task. The nature of HIV poses some unique challenges in terms of finding a cure. The ability of the virus to hide in host’s cells is very challenging. The thing is, when this virus enters into the human cells, it penetrate right into the DNA within 72hours of entering into the body. Now the body’s immunity no longer recognizes it as a foreign body.
Even if an individual’s HIV has been suppressed by Antireteroviral treatment. The hidden HIV, known as the “latent reservoir,” can resurface if ARV treatment is withdrawn, hence daily medication. The body produces new cells every day, so the work of this ARVs is to build borders to stop the virus from invading the new cells.
Curtailing the spread to other body cells will remain this way until there’s a way the hidden viruses can be exposed.
QUANTUM LEAP
Some primate models have been cured using several therapies rendering hope for these remedies to be tested on human volunteer.
Flashing backwards, there are evidences that a cure can be achieved. In 2008, Timothy Brown, an HIV-positive man also know as the ‘Berlin Patient’ got cured by a bone marrow transplant from an HIV resistant donor.
Subsequently, the same procedure of transplant was repeated on a London patient called Adam Castillajo and it worked. He was still HIV free in 2020, 2 years+ after discontinuing antiretrovirals.
When all these cases were announced, questions like “Have we finally achieved an HIV cure?” arose. Well, unfortunately, the answer remains ‘not yet’. Bone marrow transplants prove to be of high risk for HIV positive patients and also, HIV resistant donors are rare.
All these trials have been inspiring scientists and researchers to discover better options against HIV.
Gradually, we are on the way to cure HIV. We where here before it, we should be here after it!
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