Scientists optimistic of AIDS cure for some

Fauci and other scientists point to the difficulties they have encountered to completely expunge the virus that destroys the immune system and exposes infected people to pneumonia, TB, and other opportunistic disease.

Antiretroviral drugs slow down virus reproduction, allowing people to live symptom-free lives and slowing transmission to others, but much of the virus hides away in “reservoir” cells only to reemerge and start spreading again once treatment stops.

A team of scientists at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, is experimenting with an anti-cancer drug to flush the virus out of its hiding place, then to be killed.

“Ultimately, we want a cure that is available to a large number of people,” a member of the team, Sharon Lewin from Monash University, told AFP at the conference.

“I think the virus is persistent in people for multiple reasons, not one reason… now we are looking at the virus that hides in the DNA, we are finding the way to take on part of the problem. Ultimately we will need a combined approach, like we had for cancer.”

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