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Asked by tiyanaaaserenity to Katy, Lyn, Paul, PB on 21 Jun 2013. This question was also asked by evemackley, sulty4skin, 07stepr07.
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Katy Brown answered on 21 Jun 2013:
I hope so but I don’t know. There are hundreds of groups worldwide looking at possible HIV treatments and there has been lots of progress, but the virus evolves very quickly, so it is good at outrunning any new treatments.
However, we already have very good HIV treatments – people infected with HIV in developed countries with access to healthcare can live fairly normal lives with HIV by taking antiretroviral drugs.
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Paul Waines answered on 27 Jun 2013:
Hi tiyanaaaserenity- as I’m an optimist I’m going to say that I think it will. However, I’m talking about a ‘functional’ cure.
what I mean is this: I dont think it’ll be possible to actually remove the virus from infected bodies ( as in an ‘actual’ cure), but I am confident we will soon have drugs which will stop HIV from causing our bodies harm (it does this by shutting down the immune system).
If this can be achieved, then this will buy time for scientists (called virologists) to work on an actual cure.
Hope this answers your question!
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Ee Lyn Lim answered on 28 Jun 2013:
I’m quite optimistic that it will! Scientists are making great progress at this from a few different directions, and I think when those different directions come together, we’ll finally have a cure!
HIV works by getting into the blood stream and attacking a type of immune cell, called helper T cells. They inject their genetic material into the cells, where it sneakily inserts itself into the cell’s own DNA, so that every time the cell divides, it multiplies the virus genes, too. Periodically, the virus will come out of hiding and use its infected cell to make lots of new baby viruses, killing the cell in the process. When it does that, you will get a huge drop in the number of immune cells, which is what makes HIV patients so ill. But the virus never all comes out at once – some of them will stay hidden in the cells, quietly multiplying – so that even if you get all the new viruses with antiviral drugs, you’ll never be able to completely clear the disease from the body.
But there’s hope! There are two main discoveries that I think will be great progress for this. One is a kind of drug called SAHA, which forces HIV to come out of hiding. That means that instead of waiting for HIV to emerge whenever it feels like it, we can use this drug to make all the infected cells start making new virus at the same time. This makes it possible to actually CLEAR the virus, without worrying about there being a few cells left that will come up again a few years later.
The second is a technique that teaches the body to make antibodies! HIV itself is such a sneaky virus that the body can’t get a hold of it – it’s got so many ways to change the way it looks that our immune system can never quite make an antibody that sticks to it. But looking at the virus through science, we know exactly what type of antibody SHOULD be made – so we just make the antibody for it! There is a group of scientists working on putting the code for making this antibody into muscle cells, so that the body will just make what we tell it to, without getting fooled by the virus. If we can get our body to produce lots of this antibody that will take out all the HIV that come out in the blood – and combine it with the SAHA drug that makes sure nothing else stays hidden – then we can actually, properly, get HIV completely out of the body!
Of course, all of this is still theoretical – we are a long way from being able to use this to treat humans. But we can see a way to do it, and that’s definitely better than nothing!
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