by An international team of researchers has found a way to boost the body’s own ability to fight the AIDS virus (HIV).paperPublished in the journal Nature Medicine.Researchers believe this is a step towards a cure for AIDSimportant step. Antiretroviral therapy (ART), currently used to treat HIV and prevent the onset of AIDS, suppresses the amount of the virus in the blood and partially restores the immune system. However, if ART therapy is stopped, the amount of virus in the blood rises to the level before the treatment started within a few weeks. That’s because HIV hides in the genome of some of the body’s immune cells, and it’s those cells that this study targets to intervene. The researchers looked at the effects of two types of experimental drugs on people who were recently diagnosed with HIV. The findings suggest that newly diagnosed HIV carriers who take anti-HIV monoclonal antibodies while receiving treatment experience a faster decline in viral counts and better immunity to HIV after treatment begins. Their immune systems can also partially or completely suppress the virus if they stop taking their usual anti-HIV drugs.
