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27 Oct 2008 07:07 am

25 Years Later

Scientific American has a special report on HIV. Here's the last paragraph from Mario Stevenson's article on the search for a cure:

Basic research will probably continue to reveal novel therapeutic targets, which could lead to the development of new antiviral agents that hit HIV in multiple ways. If we can design drugs that complement and intensify the effects of existing therapies, we may finally be able to deplete the all-important latent reservoir and eradicate the virus. To that end, larger studies exploring the impact of long-term therapy intensification on the virus are currently under way, with results expected within the next two years. Those findings should tell us whether the eradication of HIV from an infected in dividual is a realistic goal. We wait with great anticipation.

There is also an article on vaccine research and an article on why research must continue despite dissapointing results thus far. My own view is that vaccine research is only worth it for unrelated scientific breakthroughs. But eradicating HIV by a combination of powerful anti-retrovirals that can enter stem cells is well worth pursuing. And because treatment, by suppressing viral load, inhibits transmission, the vaccine-treatment dichotomy is not so stark anyway.

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