Supervirus

[toastywombel]

So I came across an interesting article about the HIV virus. I don't know if this has been mentioned already but,

 

"Drug-resistant strains of HIV have already been documented in San Francisco and elsewhere in the US, and Europe. Now a model of their transmission, based on studies of gay San Francisco men, forecasts a rapid upsurge in the next five years."

 

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18394-drugresistant-hiv-set-for-rapid-upsurge.html

 

From what I know, antiviral medication is really effective on extending the life of the patient and extending the onset of full blow AIDS. Here is one study supporting the above claim.

 

Strains of HIV that are drug-resistant; It is a somewhat scary thought.

[Genecks]

Here is something else that's quite dated that you might be interested in:

 

Can a Bone-Marrow Transplant Halt HIV?

By Eben Harrell / London Thursday, Nov. 13, 2008

 

The human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is a pathogen so wily and protean that researchers rarely talk about curing infected patients, focusing instead on treatment and prevention. But in an announcement that caused a flutter of excitement and a wave of prudent skepticism, Berlin-based hematologist Gero Huetter claimed on Thursday that he has cured an HIV infection in a 42-year-old man through a bone-marrow transplant.

 

The patient, a U.S. citizen living in Germany, was suffering from advanced leukemia and HIV two years ago when Huetter treated the cancer with a bone-marrow transplant at Berlin's Charité hospital. As a side experiment, he inserted the bone marrow of a donor naturally resistant to HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. (Researchers have long known that about 1% of Europeans carry a genetic mutation that makes their cells resistant to HIV infection.) Bone marrow produces the cells that HIV attacks. So, the thinking went, inserting marrow that produces HIV-resistant cells might endow the patient with a means to repel the infection. Twenty months after the transplant, Huetter says, the man shows no signs of carrying the virus. (See stories of people surviving with HIV.)

 

Is this a viable cure for HIV? Not by a long shot. Even Huetter says bone-marrow transplants, which kill about a third of patients, are so dangerous that "they can't be justified ethically" in anything other than desperate situations like late-stage leukemia. Nor is it clear that Huetter's claim to have cured his patient is yet justified. HIV has a frustrating ability to hide in hard-to-detect "reservoir" cells in various parts of the body. Current antiviral drugs, for example, can lower a patient's "viral load" to the point that HIV is undetectable in his or her bloodstream. But as soon as such patients are taken off antivirals, the virus comes storming back.

 

Huetter's patient has not received antivirals for two years and remains virus-free even in the known HIV hiding spots of brain and rectal tissue, according to Huetter's tests. But many researchers remain skeptical about whether these tests have been thorough enough. Dr. Andrew Badley, director of the HIV and immunology research lab at the Mayo Clinic, told the Associated Press, "A lot more scrutiny from a lot of different biological samples would be required to say it's not present."

 

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1858843,00.html#ixzz0cypZh9Ud

 

Combined with other technologies, stem cell technology, routing things to the right places, and more knowledge about cellular biology and immunology, I think we'll have this HIV issue figured out this century.

Edited January 18, 2010 by Genecks

[toastywombel]

Cool article, yeah I would agree that we will have solved this problem before the end of this century.

[insane_alien]

or the problem will have solved us, whichever...

[Rickdog]

Only till the next mutation of the virus occurs, which certainly will.....

[insane_alien]

the virus is constantly mutating. thats why it evades cures so easily.

[Sisyphus]

Yup. Evolution sure can be annoying, sometimes.

[SH3RL0CK]

The other problem is that the people with HIV (Edit, with AIDS, not just the presence of the virus) have a compromised immune system. The HIV virus isn't going away without the immune system. Thus, drugs can only suppress the virus until it mutates such that it can overcome the drug.

 

IIRC, this is also a reason (but probably not the only reason) we are seeing the emergence of drug resistant TB. AIDS patients without an immune system allow TB to survive various antibotics until the TB mutates a way around the antibiotic. I find this much more frightening than drug-resistant HIV because TB is so much more transmittable. Makes me wonder what other infectious diseases might emerge with a strong resistance to current antibiotics?

 

Hopefully, we will eventually find a way to beat this virus.

[KikiG14]

Yeah, I read that it's quickly becoming resistant to medications, though I'm not at all surprised, considering it is a virus and like any other it will become resistant to medications after a while...sucks that a lot of people aren't aware of just how many are infected...this is a real problem, but we've come a very long way, so I wouldn't be surprised if a cure is found during my lifetime.