Sharon Lewin, an AIDS scientist at the University of Melbourne in Australia, said “it’s always hard to know, when you have a single case report, is there something about this particular individual that’s unique?”
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A handful of people have been declared “functionally cured” of HIV before, when the virus was no longer detectable in their blood. In BC, TasP® has resulted in a 65 per cent drop in new HIV cases, an 88 per cent drop in new AIDS cases and an 83 per cent drop in AIDS-related deaths since 1994.
This time there is more caution.
Few babies are born with HIV in developed countries because doctors routinely test pregnant women for the virus and give them drugs that prevent infection in their newborns. In addition, HIV-positive learners and students as well as the unemployed who are living with HIV/AIDS will get the book for free, although it will sell for N$365 to the general public. However, Saez-Cirion said it is yet to be seen that for how long her remission can last.
That happened with a group of 14 adults in France, known as the Visconti cohort. They opined that the day was not far when the HIV virus would be brought down to low levels, though not altogether eliminated from the body.
In addition, the investigators found that among the HPTN 052 participants who started antiretroviral therapy early but failed treatment before May 2011, those who had a higher viral load when they joined the study were likely to develop resistance to their antiretroviral drugs. In 2011, the HPTN 052 study investigators reported a breakthrough: Starting HIV treatment early, when the immune system is relatively healthy, reduced the risk of sexually transmitting the virus to an uninfected partner by 96 percent over 18 months. From then on, she continued to take antiretroviral drugs for just under six years, at which point her family decided to end her treatment.
“I wanted to go to school”, explained Joyce, about how she contracted HIV. Asier Saez-Cirion, M.D., of the Pasteur Institute in Paris, presented the case Monday at the worldwide AIDS Society 2015 Conference, held from June 19 to 22 in Vancouver, Canada, the Associated Press reported. “About 1% of people can do that”.
The teenager has been diagnosed with HIV immediately at birth. Itwas possible that a few who had been treated early in their infection might be able to stop taking the drugs, but that had to be properly tested.
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Ms Lewin told reporters the next steps in “cure” research include clinical trials on helping infected people stay in remission after stopping treatment with antiretroviral medications, treatments to “shock and cure” the virus and bolstering the immune systems of patients. “These studies are happening in Thailand at the moment”.
