Death To HIV

Scientists at major medical centers in the United States, the drug industry and AIDS advocates are calling for a new research effort to defeat, once and for all, the viral infections that have caused the global AIDS epidemic that kills more than two million people each year worldwide, despite the antiviral drugs that are keeping other millions alive even now.

The goal - admittedly a longshot - is to find a path that would free every infected patient in the world from both the AIDS-causing virus and from life-long dependence on the drugs that can hold the virus at bay, but are far too costly for most of the underdeveloped nations of the world.

As successful as they are in combatting the AIDS virus, the drug combinations now available cannot eliminate every virus particle from the bodies of those who are infected. Those dormant particles - latent is the medical term - pose an ongoing threat of renewed infection without lifelong use of those antiviral drugs.

By killing virtually all the latent viruses in the cells of infected people - even in those who live in good health while taking the anti-viral drugs, the researchers hope the immune systems of those who are infected would be empowered to cope with any few virus particles that remain without ever requiring more antiviral drug therapy.

The idea for the new approach had its origin in 1996, at the sixth International AIDS Conference in Vancouver, B.C., when combinations of then new drugs called protease inhibitors were shown to be highly effective in suppressing virus infections and returning even sick AIDS patients to apparently healthy lives - as long as they continued the drugs.

Since then expensive "cocktails" of three or more drugs have become standard in what is known as HAART, for Highly Active Anti-Retroviral Therapy, and only two years ago three of those drugs were combined into a single pill taken once a day. But the cost remains high, and few if any nations in the developing world can afford them for their millions of people living with HIV infections or with AIDS itself.

More than 33 million people around the world are now living with HIV infections or AIDS, according to the United Nations, but only 4 million are receiving the HAART drugs - of whom 1 million are in the United States.

Courtesy SFgate.com