Hiv/AIDS

[noz92]

I was taking a special class in school, and the teacher started talking about HIV and AIDS. She said it was because the HIV virus enters the body and destroys all of the Helper-T cells. With these gone, the body has nothing to defend itself against simple viruses and bacteria, such as the common cold (which would develope into pnamonea, which is deadly). This becomes AIDS.

 

When she said that, I may have thought of a way to cure AIDS, but the treatment would have to be done over and over again (such as every few years).

The idea lies in stem cells. If we take bunch of stem cells and have them take the form of Helper-T cells, then we've temporarily cured AIDS. Unfortunatly, who's to say the HIV won't destroy the Helper-T cells again, in which case the treatment would have to be done every few years or so (once symptoms start occuring).

 

Would this work?

[Mokele]

Quite possibly, but as you already noted, it would merely be a temporary relief, rather that a solution. Such reliefs, like the retroviral inhibitors we already have on the market, do help, but are hardly a cure or a preventative.

 

It would also probably cost more than modern HIV drugs for the same effect, at least initially.

 

Mokele

[ecoli]

Also, the T-Cells keep out other pathogens, but they aren't very succesful against HIV. Replenishing T-Cells wouldn't help with the HIV virus, specifically. But, for temporary relief it would, in theory, work.

[Nalos Surith]

I would think that with the recent development of nanites we will eventually beable to give HIV/AIDS patients replacement T-cells which should work more efficently keeping out the virus that causes HIV/AIDs and many other diseases. I do see great things to come of nano-techology, hopefully these things will be applied to the world soon.

[Sayonara]

I suspect you'd essentially be treating a symptom (or a pseudo-symptom, seeing as it's sort of part of the AIDS mechanism) rather than the problem itself.