Can 'Elite HIV Controllers' Finally Lead to a Cure?
new study from Ragon Institute — a research group dedicated to finding vaccines and cures for HIV and other infectious diseases — suggests that if scientists can figure out how some people are able to control HIV without drugs they may be able to permanently “block and lock” HIV infection.HIV is a retrovirus, which means it doesn’t just hijack the cell and force it to make a new virus.
Instead, it buries itself into nucleus of our cells, splicing itself into our DNA. Some of these cells “remember” old infections and things that look like them.
And for people on antiretroviral drug therapy, the instructions that tell a cell to make new HIV are invisible and “locked” away like a reservoir that only opens up when people stop ART, or at least, that’s how it works for most people.But for some people, that doesn’t happen.
In fact, about one in 200 with HIV remain virtually undetectable even without ever taking any ART. They’re referred to as “elite controllers.”Two people, Loreen Willenberg of California and Esperanza Patient of Argentina, seem to have cured themselves of HIV without any medical help.There’s a larger and uncertain number of people who have progressive HIV infections with detectable viral loads who start ART, then stop their meds for various reasons and remain undetectable for months and even years later.
