Category: Treatment
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Yesterday, a group of Australian researchers published a study in the journal Cell that has now received extensive media coverage, much of it extremely misleading. The researchers themselves bear the blame, as their institution’s press release about the paper makes dubious claims that were inevitably destined to sow confusion. Most notably, the study involves mice infected…
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In the early 1990s, UCLA researcher Janis Giorgi published evidence that the activation of the immune system by HIV (as measured by expression of a marker called CD38 on CD8 T cells) was a strong predictor of the pace of progression to AIDS. At the time the idea was controversial, but a voluminous amount of evidence…
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Just before the holidays, the journal Science Translational Medicine published results from a phase I trial of a new type of anti-HIV drug named VIR-576. The drug inhibits the entry of HIV into target cells by blocking the mechanism the virus uses to anchor itself to the cell. This mechanism involves a harpoon-like extension called…
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In a letter published in the new issue of the journal AIDS, Gero Hütter and Eckhard Thiel provide an update on their efforts to find a second candidate for the stem cell transplant procedure that appears to have cured Timothy Ray Brown of HIV infection. The work has been facilitated by a meeting the doctors…
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At the 2008 Conference on Retroviruses & Opportunistic Infections, a piece of paper pinned to a poster board conveyed some surprising information: an HIV-infected man who had received two stem cell transplants for acute myelogenous leukemia (and the dauntingly toxic ablation regimens that go with them) had remained off antiretroviral therapy for nearly ten months…
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Una O’Doherty’s research group at the University of Pennsylvania has pioneered the development of tests to measure HIV DNA that is integrated into the genome of cells. The integration of HIV DNA presents a formidable obstacle to curing HIV infection, because it leads to the formation of a stable reservoir of infected cells that antiretroviral…
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Whittling down reservoirs of HIV-infected cells in the body is thought to be an important first step in the pursuit of a cure. Whether there might be a threshold HIV reservoir size below which the body could contain the virus without additional intervention has been unclear; there have been some reports of individuals who have…
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A newly published analysis of a small, 8-week study of the antimalarial drug chloroquine reports a significant decline in CD8 T cell activation (as measured by expression of CD38 and HLA-DR) and CD8 and CD4 T cell turnover (measured by the cell cycle marker Ki67). A slightly larger 30-person study involving 12 weeks of chloroquine…
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Until recently, the idea of genetically modifying a person’s immune system to make it resistant to HIV was generally viewed as extremely appealing, but so dauntingly impractical that it belonged in the realm of science fiction. Over the past year or so, an accumulation of new data has offered hope that it may eventually be…
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On July 16 & 17, immediately prior to the XVIII International AIDS Conference, the International AIDS Society held a workshop entitled "'Towards a Cure': HIV Reservoirs and Strategies to Control Them" that focused on the critically important topic of moving beyond antiretroviral therapy and addressing HIV persistence. Powerpoint presentations and abstracts have now been posted to…