This Groundbreaking New Study Made A Major Stride Towards Finally Finding A Cure For HIV
For the past forty years, researchers around the globe have been searching for a cure for HIV.
In the United States alone, about 1.2 million people have the virus. And a shocking thirteen percent– or about one hundred and fifty-six thousand people– do not even know.
As of this month, though, a team of researchers from Aarhus University and Aarhus University Hospital in Denmark believes that they have taken a significant step in the fight for a cure.
Led by Dr. Ole Schmeltz Sogaard, the team collaborated with scientists from the U.S., Canada, UK, and Spain to conduct a novel HIV study.
“This study is one of the first to be carried out on human beings in which we have demonstrated a way to strengthen the body’s own ability to fight HIV– even when today’s standard treatment is paused,” Sogaard said.
“We thus regard the study as an important step in the direction of a cure.”
Today, those diagnosed with HIV often receive antiretroviral therapy– which essentially suppresses virus levels in the patient’s blood and works to partially restore the immune system.
But, even though these therapies are effective in the short term, patients must keep up with their treatments. And in the event that treatments are discontinued due to inaccessibility or other reasons, virus levels can rise to the same level they were at prior to treatment within just a few weeks.
Sadly, this is true for all patients– regardless of age– because HIV is able to hide within the genome of immune cells.
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Interestingly, though, the study led by Schmeltz aimed to specifically target these immune cells and tested the effects of two experimental medicines on patients who were recently diagnosed with HIV.
The study’s participants hailed from Denmark and the UK and were randomly placed into four groups.
First, every participant received the same standard antiretroviral treatment. Then, some participants were administered Romidepsin– a drug that would hopefully stop the virus from hiding within immune cells.
Additionally, other participants were given monoclonal antibodies– which were intended to eliminate HIV-infected immune cells and help strengthen the body’s overall immune system.
And according to Dr. Jesper Damsgaard Gunst, the study’s lead author, the results were very promising.
“Our study shows that newly diagnosed people with HIV who are given monoclonal antibodies together with their usual HIV medicine show a faster decrease in the amount of virus after the treatment starts and develop a better immunity against HIV,” Gunst began.
“And, their immune system can partially or completely suppress the virus if they are taking a break from their usual HIV medicine.”
This success has been attributed to the monoclonal antibodies’ ability to help the participants’ immune systems identify the infected cells and kill them. The antibodies also bind to the viruses in the lymph nodes, which allows certain immune cells to develop immunity against HIV.
So, in other words, these antibodies enable those infected with HIV to essentially control virus spread and defend themselves against HIV infection-induced harm.
While the researchers are extremely hopeful about this discovery, though, there is still much more research to be done before HIV is cured.
Primarily, the team needs to figure out how to optimize this treatment and rev up its effects.
“We speculate that the optimized treatment will have an even stronger effect on both the virus and the participants’ immunity. This way, we hope to enhance the immune system’s ability to permanently suppress the remaining virus,” Sogaard explained.
Still, the study has attracted attention from all over the globe and reinvigorated hopes that a cure for HIV may be very near.
To read the study’s complete findings, which have since been published in Nature Medicine, visit the link here.
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