Posted on October 25, 2013
Source: The Wall Street Journal
New research has dealt a setback to scientists' quest for a cure for HIV, finding that the virus might be harder to eliminate from the human body than previously thought.
The study, published Thursday, found that the amount of potentially active HIV that lurks in infected immune-system cells could be up to 60 times as large as previously observed. That poses a major hurdle for a promising strategy researchers have hoped might one day eradicate the virus and enable HIV patients to go off therapy.
The study by researchers at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore damps recent optimism that a cure for HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, could be within reach.
AIDS researchers have known for nearly two decades that HIV goes dormant and hides in so-called latent reservoirs in immune-system cells where it can't be detected by conventional tests or affected by antiretroviral drugs that attack active virus. But research shows that if therapy is stopped the dormant virus is reactivated, reigniting the infection.
