Electron microscope image of a lymphocyte with HIV cluster. HIV/AIDS researchers have announced progress in attacking the small remnants of the debilitating virus which remain in the body even when its presence is otherwise undetectable. Current HIV drugs are able to suppress the virus in most of the body but it still remains hiding in small amounts in so-called 'reservoir cells,' only a few of which have so far been discovered. Even in several isolated but highly publicised cases where HIV appears to have been functionally killed off it has made a reappearance after several years. At the AIDS 2014 conference in Melbourne Danish researchers provided information on how they have learned how to eject HIV from some of the identified reservoir cells. While the discovery is promising, the NZ AIDS Foundation says it is "a long way from an effective cure" for HIV infection. "I hope they have further success along that path," NZAF Executive Director Shaun Robinson told GayNZ.com Daily News this morning, "but we feel it will still be many years" before a cure is in place. Robinson points to many announcements of promising cure or vaccination research over the more than thirty years of the HIV epidemic, which mostly affects gay and bisexual men in New Zealand, none of which have led to total success in killing off the virus or epidemic. "It's exciting and encouraging that people are working on possible cures," he says, "but until we actually have a cure health promotion of safe sex, primarily through the use of condoms, is still the way to go."
Credit: GayNZ.com Daily News staff
First published: Tuesday, 22nd July 2014 - 4:10pm