It was in Los Angeles in 1981 that the first report emerged of an unusual cluster of patients whose immune systems appeared to have failed. This report is now acknowledged as the first scientific account of an infectious disease that was to become the HIV/AIDS global epidemic, infecting 60 million people and killing 25 million to date.
Three decades later, and with more than 20 antiretroviral drugs to combat HIV, treatment can now significantly prolong life and reduce the rate of viral transmission. For some patients, life expectancy with uninterrupted treatment is now similar to that of someone who is not infected with HIV – not the death sentence it once was – and the global rate of new infections is at last declining.
Yet, current therapies do not fully restore health and, in resource-poor settings, patients often lack access to antiretroviral drugs. Moreover, because the virus has the ability to insert its genetic material into the genetic material of the patient’s cells, ‘latent’ viruses can re-emerge at any point, necessitating lifelong drug treatment.
“There is no imminent prospect of a vaccine, and there may not be one in the way that we have for measles and mumps, where our own immune system can clear the virus,” explained Andrew Lever, Professor of Infectious Diseases in the Department of Medicine and Honorary Consultant Physician at Addenbrooke’s Hospital. “The bottom line is 60 million immune systems have had a crack at eradicating HIV and all have failed.”
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Image: HIV-1 budding from a cultured cell
Credit: Cynthia Goldsmith, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Reproduced courtesy of the University of Cambridge
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Offensive manoeuvres in the war against HIV
26 February 2013
Although anti-HIV drugs can significantly prolong life, patients must take the drugs for the rest of their lives. New approaches to therapeutics may hold the answer to finding a cure for HIV.