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Subscribe to RSSFourteen HIV patients who got quick treatment with AIDS drugs have been able to stop the treatment without the virus coming back, French researchers reported on Friday.
While it’s clear the patients are not cured, they may be able to continue healthy lives without the drugs, the researchers report in the journal PloS Pathogens. And their cases point to the importance of diagnosing and treating HIV patients as quickly as possible.
Earlier this month, doctors made headlines with the case of a Mississippi toddler who got a larger-than-usual dose of HIV drugs at birth when it turned out her mother had been infected and didn’t know it. Pre-treatment with the drugs can protect babies from infection at birth, and treating the mothers can further reduce the risk they will pass along infection.
The report about the 14 French patients supports the idea that, at least in some patients, quick treatment may prevent the virus from taking hold in the body.
Quick treatment may also stop the virus from mutating, said Asier Sáez-Cirión of Frances Pasteur Institute and colleagues, who wrote the report. The human immunodeficiency virus that causes AIDS is highly mutation prone, and this makes it hard both for the body’s immune system to control it and to make a vaccine against it.
About 34 million people are infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, globally; 25 million have died from it. While there’s no vaccine, cocktails of powerful antiviral drugs can keep the virus suppressed and keep patients healthy. No matter how long patients take the drugs, however, the virus lurks in the body and usually comes back if the drugs are stopped.
Fewer than one percent of HIV patients somehow manage to control the virus on their own and can stop taking the drugs.
Sáez-Cirión and colleagues were trying to find out how they do it. They studied a database of 3,500 patients. About 1,000 of them had begun taking drug cocktails with 6 months of having been infected, and 70 stopped taking the drugs when the virus was brought under tight control. Some wanted a "drug holiday" and some were taking part in a trial of what's called scheduled treatment interruption -- a way to give patients a break from taking the drugs, which can have unpleasant side-effects.
They singled out 14 who got quick treatment in the late 1990s or early 2000s when they showed symptoms of HIV infection – a rash and fever, for instance. All of them responded very well and within three months the virus had been driven to “undetectable” levels. That means it is barely active and not replicating withing the body.
The patients were able to stop taking the drugs, stay healthy, and the virus stayed at low levels. Tests of their blood showed nothing really unusual, but the virus did not seem to be attacking the immune system cells, called CD4 T-cells, that it usually infects.
If a patient is able to stop taking drugs, doctors call it a "functional cure," even though the virus is still in the body and might come back years later.
“Our results show that early and prolonged (drug therapy) may allow some individuals with a rather unfavorable background to achieve long-term infection control and may have important implications in the search for a functional HIV cure,” the researchers wrote.
Only about 5 percent to 15 percent of patients who get quick treatment are able to control the virus this way, the researchers estimated. Everyone else starts getting signs of infection again when they stop taking the drugs. In these 14 patients, the immune system did not appear to be controlling the virus in the same way as the so-called elite controllers, the 1 percent of people who can do it naturally.
It's possible early treatment prevented the virus from hiding out in long-lived immune cells called viral reservoirs, they said.
“However, it remains unclear why only a limited fraction of patients is able to control the infection after therapy interruption,” the researchers wrote.
Doctors once recommended that patients with HIV not start treatment until they “needed” it – when the virus reached certain levels in the blood, or when the immune system showed a certain level of damage. Now that it’s clear that immediate treatment can keep patients healthier and stop them from infecting someone else, U.S. guidelines say all patients diagnosed with HIV should be treated.
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That is great news! I hope we are coming to the end of this terrible MAN MADE plague.
If you mean 'man-made' as in the spread of this disease, then yes. But, this is no different than many plagues before it. Humans are the greatest cause of the spread of a virus. It sounds like your issue is with certain groups (i.e. drug users, gay males) that were associated with the spread of this disease. But, holistically, no different than how past pandemics spread - by humans. However, HIV was not man-made.
But, I agree with your sentiment that this is great news.
They have already found the cure to HIV..and it is linked in this article (the middle article in the "Related" links section). It's not an "easy" cure, as it involves a bone marrow transplant, but the cure is there. At the time of the article, there were a couple more steps left to actually finish the study, but it was really a formality at that point. Now they can focus on improving the bone marrow transplant process, which would help out in the fight against cancer as well.
Thailand cut their HIV infection rates by 50% during the last two Decades. They put - dealers, traffickers & manufactures to DEATH and then treat the addicts for FREE. Thailand achieved sustained reduction in HIV by the government enforcing 100% condom use in brothels and media promotions. Their infection rates are still HIGH 1.3% due to the IDU (20 to 40%) and infected sex tourist...
Bone marrow transplantation is too dangerous and costly for widespread use as a cure. Many patients die as a result of chemotherapy or reactions to the transplant, which is usually a last resort in treating life-threatening diseases. As Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, put it:
HIV is a behaviorally-related disease, more specifically behaviors that are illegal, sinful or immoral: fornication, adultery, sex before marriage, drug use.
Stop the behavior, stop the spread of disease. Billions spent so that people can continue doing what they shouldn't.
Fornication is illegal, immoral and sinful?
You're telling me you got yourself checked and every sexual partner you've had checked before "fornicating"?
Get your facts right. Billions are spent because with or without insurance, the fact is Truvada (the predominate med to fight the virus) is sold for $1200 for a 30 day supply. You really think it cost someone $1200 to make that one bottle? Be smarter than that and granted you're probably a little sheltered, try to look with bigger eyes.
Other CD cells are also taking on the RNA of HIV, CD4 cells are killed while other CD are reseviours. Long term, deep rooted people need bone marrow transplants... Im tired of living like this... soo much pain, drugs, 13 yrs... literally killing me.
They are $30,000 in India versus $250,000 in USA.
I've been on meds for over a year now. Never had any symptoms, always been undetectable, very rarely do I get any stigma associated with it. Most people are now smart enough to realize that we're not walking death.
To the fool that said the only people that have it are sinful and immoral, you can kiss my ass and repent for your immoral and sinful statement, but don't wipe your lips and have a great day.
A physician writing in JAMA reported that serious questions about the overall effectiveness of the vaccine have never been addressed. Should young girls face the risk of an adverse event to prevent "an infection that in a few cases will causes cancer 20 to 40 years from now," she questioned.
In addition, the vaccine manufacturer funded educational programs sponsored by professional medical associations. Some associations helped market the vaccine and influenced policy about it with the help of ready-made presentations developed by the manufacturer, according to the JAMA report.
Of the 12,424 reports of adverse events, 772 were of serious, including 32 deaths. Two females died of ALS. There were reports of blood clots in the lungs, heart problems.
An agency of the CDC concluded that it could not be proven the deaths were due to the vaccine. There was it said "no common pattern" to the deaths. What if, for example, people died of diseases as wide ranging as stomach cancer, kidney cancer, ischemic heart disease, influenza and chronic airway obstruction. Would this constitute "no common pattern"? Well, cigarette smoking causes all those different problems, according to the CDC.
There is no data showing the vaccine lasts beyond five years. I don't think parents should be sneered at for questioning giving this vaccine to their 11 and 12 year olds (and even younger).
Again, this was a crappy story. Maybe your award-winning reporter was having a bad day.
Sorry, that comment was for the vaccine story.
Seems like pretty soon HIV will be no more harmful than the chicken pox (which is a herpes like virus) Once you get chicken pox, the virus never leaves you but you are no longer sick, nor can you spread the virus.