New developments in HIV treatment research

Two HIV-infected patients seem to have cured but relapsed - a sad news for medical researchers and people with H .

Recently, the medical community in particular and humanity in general have received sad news from the fight against HIV / AIDS. Two HIV-infected patients underwent bone marrow transplants and are thought to have functionally recovered, and their bodies are now positive again with HIV.

HIV is a virus that just lives in white blood cells, and destroys this type of cells produced from this bone marrow. Therefore, researchers hope that the disease can be treated by completely replacing the infected bone marrow.

This is also a regular procedure used to treat blood cancer. Therefore, although the complexity and risk of death are very high, doctors still feel quite optimistic about this new direction.

HIV virus kills white blood cells, weakens the body's immune system

Two patients from Boston had a bone marrow transplant to treat the devastating disease that tormented them for 3.5 years. After the surgery is complete, they still maintain the medication and are strictly monitored for the amount of virus in the blood. In 2012, researchers published results that showed no HIV virus was detected in these two patients after marrow transplantation.

However, a few months after stopping the anti-HIV drug, the virus returned to the patient's blood. Maybe, when there is still influence of drugs, HIV still exists but at a low level so it is not detected. The second possibility is that it may be hiding outside the blood cells so the team can't find it.

This means further research and scope to search for viruses such as liver, intestine, brain . However, the tissue in these areas is difficult to access in the region. that is not conducted regularly.

Once patients stop taking drugs, the HIV virus returns to normal and the patient has H. Both patients now have to re-use anti-HIV drugs to control the viral load.

Although the news is really not very good, but they give us new information, which partly helps researchers have more treatment in the treatment of viruses.

So far, only one patient has successfully cured HIV disease by a bone marrow transplant. He was fortunate to donate a bone marrow from a person with a mutation against HIV virus . However, he must also use high-dose chemotherapy and radiation to remove the virus from the body before transplanting. He has now stopped using the drug and continues to give negative results to the HIV virus.

Others, including a 36-month-old baby and a group of 14 patients in France, were able to stop taking antiviral drugs and were not re-infected until now because they were treated early, right away. when infected. However, it is too early to conclude that they have actually cured because of the possibility that the HIV virus is still hiding somewhere in the body's cells, waiting for the opportunity to reappear.